The Road Long Traveled
by introvirtued
Summary: Elena Drake & her older sisters Aubrey & Alyssa have been hunting with Adam, Sam & Dean Winchester all their lives, & they can't bear to lose each other. From Angels to the Apocalypse to the Darkness, these six Hunters have seen it all. This is the story of that adventure, filled with twists, turns & surprises. Based off the original episodes but will have other plots & ideas too.
1. Who Said He Was Alone?

**A/N: Hello, and thank you for clicking on this story! TRLT is a rewrite of _Supernatural_ , from Season 1 to the end of the show (Season 15, which has yet to air as of the publication of this author's note on 5/19/19), but with _major_ changes. I hope they flow well, and you like my OCs! In case people have forgotten who Adam is (looking at you, writers), this story includes Adam Milligan, Dean and Sam's half brother, but TRLT has Adam hunting with boys all his life. I also rewrite canon in basically every season ( _character deaths_ , mainly, because there's a lot I don't agree with when it comes to character deaths; you'll see what I mean). This is in first person & past tense, with alternating POVs with the ****Magnificent Six, aka the Drake sisters and Winchester brothers in the first chapters. There are a ton of OCs in TRLT, because I love creating OCs** **.**

 **Note: Like the pilot of SPN, chapter one of TRLT starts on October 31st, 2005. More timeline details to come.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize, like Sam or Dean. I only own my OCs, original plots/canon divergences (I think? I'm not actually sure, please don't sue me)** **, and whatever else you don't recognize. All mistakes are my own - I don't have a beta.**

 **Enjoy the first chapter of TRLT!**

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 **Actresses:**

 **Ashley Benson** as Alyssa "Lis" Paige Drake

 **Taylor Momsen** as Aubrey "Bree" Meredith Drake

 **AnnaSophia Robb** as Elena "Ellie" Noelle Drake

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 **Ages in season 1:**

Dean: 26. Birthday: January 26th, 1979. 4 years older than Sam, 2 years older than the twins, and 11 years older than Adam and Elena.

Sam: 22. Birthday: May 2nd, 1983. 4 years younger than Dean, 2 years younger than the twins, and 7 years older than Adam and Elena.

Adam: 15. Birthday: September 29th, 1990. 11 years younger than Dean, 7 years younger than Sam, 9 years younger than the twins, and 28 days older than Elena.

Alyssa and Aubrey: 24. Birthdays: August 19th, 1981. 2 years younger than Dean, 2 years older than Sam, and 9 years older than Adam and Elena.

Elena: 15. Birthday: October 27th, 1990. 11 years younger than Dean, 7 years younger than Sam, 9 years younger than her sisters, and 28 days younger than Adam.

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 **Chapter One: Who Said He Was Alone?**

 **aka: PILOT (part one)**

 **Date: October 31st, 2005**

 **Elena's POV**

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The black 1972 Pontiac LeMans GT's engine was off, and I felt like it was too quiet in our car. My window was rolled down, and even though it was barely on the uncomfortable side of too warm – given that there were three bodies inside and the car wasn't running – I had no desire to expose my entire body to the outside heat. It was seventy-six degrees outside, which was annoyingly hotter than where I was currently sitting. Between the two choices, roasting in the car or roasting outside where it was hotter, I picked the first option. So, roasting in the car it was. Fantastic.

Sam really picked a hell of a college to go to, and that isn't meant to be a dig at his choice college. I mean, it was _Stanford_ , an Ivy League school. I just strongly dislike the heat, being from upstate New York and all where the winters are cold, and the summers are warm. I may have been born in upstate New York and frequented there because I had a couple of family members and friends around there, but I didn't have a house in New York or anything like that. I couldn't afford one anyway, as I was basically jobless (you don't get paid for hunting) and fifteen years old. The Winchester-Drake group moved around a lot, never staying in one place for too long unless the job went on for longer than expected, staying in crappy motels in small towns, and slept in the car. The car's the closest thing I have to a home. I'm sure Adam feels the same way about the Impala.

Growing up was hard, but it was our lives. We couldn't exactly swap lives with someone to be normal. I wouldn't wish this life on anyone, not even my worst enemy.

My oldest sister, Alyssa (or Lis, as she liked to be called), was pulling her blonde curls that spilled three inches past her chest into a ponytail and checking her reflection in the side mirror. She looked perfectly fine to me. Aubrey, my older sister and my other sister's twin (Alyssa's older by seventeen-and-a-half minutes; she always made sure to remind Bree – which is the name she favors over her real one – of that. _"I'm the oldest Drake in the family so what I say goes,"_ she would say all the time), was reading the _One Day at Horror Land_ Goosebumps book she had swiped from a library in Colorado after a hunt three days ago, holding the book in her right hand and shining a flashlight on the pages with her left. I guess the thought of seeing Sam didn't excite her like it did with me or Adam. Or maybe she was hiding it, whereas Adam and I hadn't shut up about Sam on the two day drive. At least I hadn't stopped thinking about him, wondering what he looked like, if he still carried himself the same way I remembered, if he still had the same quirks and mannerisms he did.

Speaking of the "College Boy" as Dean calls him, we hadn't spoken to him in four years, since he was eighteen. I never said it, but we had no way of knowing Sam was _alive_ every day, seeing as we didn't keep consistent contact with him. John had swung by Stanford whenever he could and checked up on him. I knew Adam and Dean would have flayed me alive if I suggested that he wasn't alive, so I never said anything.

...Okay, so they wouldn't really do that, but hopefully you get the picture. Talking about Sam around John wasn't recommended, either.

I sighed heavily, brought my hand up from my lap so I could rub my eye, then said aloud, "What time is it?" I looked over at the backseat of the Impala, where Adam was sitting, staring up at the ceiling. He looked really bored. Lis picked up her phone, which was placed on the dashboard of the car and flipped it open.

"It's 10:57." She announced. The oldest Winchester broke into Sam's apartment three minutes ago and neither man had waltz out of the side entrance of the complex yet. I couldn't imagine what they were talking about, or maybe Dean got held up. God forbid he gets found out and kicked out for trespassing. But I doubted that, because he wasn't stupid. We parked at the side entrance because we wanted to look less conspicuous. Our vehicles didn't exactly blend in with the more modernized makes and models that were in the parking lot, driven by insanely smart and rich college kids who maxed out their daddy's credit cards in less than four days and there were no repercussions of doing that; daddy simply gave them another credit card. Rinse and repeat. "I don't understand how pinching these idiots does anything, let alone get them to screw off." Bree mutters, referring to the book. She was almost done with it. I read that one a few years ago. "They're creatures that go bump in the night. Pinching them shouldn't fucking work. But here it is, working."

Lis hummed. "It's fiction, girl. It doesn't have to make sense." Bree turned another page. "Not to mention it's for fourth graders who have no idea what sex is, not twenty-three-year-olds who hunt and kill things like humanoid creatures that live in dark, smelly caves. Stuff that gives people nightmares."

"You want to know what also doesn't make sense?" I added, a tiny smirk tugging up at my lips.

My sisters looked back at me. "What?" They asked simultaneously. I smirked slightly, flicking my blonde hair off my shoulder in a dramatic fashion.

"Our lives." I answered. "God knows we'd land in the loony bin the second we opened our mouths." My words elicited small chuckles from them. They knew it was true. I continued. "We can't exactly just walk up to a physicist and say something like, "Hey, I murder fucked up things that go bump in the night. You know Spike from _Buffy_? Yeah, he was done for as soon as my best friend rammed a stake coated in the blood of a freshly dead man through his foot, so he was incapacitated. Then, I snuck behind him and chopped off his head with a machete as long as a grown man's arm. It was a nice, clean cut. Also, my aunt, uncle, three-year-old and newborn cousins were killed by some kind of monster only two days after my sisters turned four years old; I wasn't born yet, and their house nearly burnt down because our aunt's body was pinned to the ceiling of the newborn baby's nursery and set on fire; our little cousin died because he was trapped in his room, and our uncle's throat was slit, and his dead body was _also_ supernaturally set on fire on the living room's ceiling. Our baby cousin died in his nursery.

Then, we were raised as hunters of all things supernatural by our devastated, vengeful parents after the deaths of our family members. My sisters were nine and I had just _barely_ turned one when our father died after a hunt gone very wrong – he was torn apart by a pack of werewolves. Soon after, our grief-stricken mother left the three of us _alone_ in the dead of night with no way of knowing where she went – but not before dropping us off at the motel steps of John's door three towns over, pleading with him to look after us for the night. She went to "take care of our father's body"; but she vanished. Skipped town, left no messages explaining why she did it. It's like she dropped off the face of the Earth." I grimaced. "No way."

It was dead silent until Bree piped up. "...You think Adam's going to be excited to see him?" Oh, thank the lord, a subject change. I didn't want to continue down that road, filled with misery and anger directed at the woman who abandoned us. She glanced out the window and at Baby - the Impala - where the fifteen-year-old in question sat, and I nearly rolled my eyes. That answer was obvious; as obvious as the fact that there are seven days in a week.

"For sure. He hasn't physically seen Sam in three years, and they go together as well as peas and carrots."

I saw Lis narrow her eyes in the rear-view mirror. I stuck my tongue out at her playfully, and her expression shifted a bit. "Elena, enough with the pop culture references. I don't want another reference to come out of your mouth for the rest of the night. Understand?" I could tell by the tone of her voice that she wasn't at all serious.

"Sure thing." I said, sarcasm dripping from my voice, then leaned forward so I could read what Bree was reading. "How's the pinching part sitting with you?"

"The pinching _bullshit_ is settling just fine with me." She said flatly. Okay, so she was still annoyed by it. Here's your reminder, though, that she was reading a horror book meant for little kids. She turned a page. "Although, what if Adam ices him out for a bit because... well, he _did_ leave." She said in reference to Sam.

Lis frowned. "What makes you say that?"

She shrugged. "He _is_ the perfect mix of Sam and Dean."

I blinked. I hadn't thought of it like that. Not exactly. Now that I thought about it though, I could definitely see how Bree came to that conclusion.

"...The weapon training and melting the silver into bullets? Man, Dean, we were raised like warriors." That was Sam's voice. I turned my head so fast to the source of the voice that I nearly got whiplash. I looked out the window and saw that Adam's head was turned to where his brothers were walking up the steps, coming out of a door from the side entrance of the apartment complex, my eyes laser-focusing on Sam. He had gotten about two inches taller, and he'd clearly gotten a haircut recently. Even though I haven't seen him in years, I could still tell because his bangs were resting against his forehead. He probably cut his hair because he was studying to be a lawyer, as we found out; I cleverly charmed the college freshman who was working at the IT's office to give me that information, and Adam looked incredibly miffed after I did that. I assumed he (Sam) didn't want to have his floppy dark hair in his face all the time while cracking down on the law.

Sam looked like he wanted to say something else to Dean about the fact that they were "raised like warriors", but before he could, Adam was opening up the Impala's and barreling over to his brothers, nearly knocking Sam over as he threw his arms around his big brother's body.

"Sammy!" Adam said, and I could hear the pure joy in his voice. Sam blinked, looking a bit surprised. That didn't stop him from instantly hugging him back, and even though it was dark and the streetlights that were on didn't provide fantastic movie lighting, I saw that Dean was smiling at the exchange. I knew that Sam was just as happy to see Adam as Adam was as happy to see Sam after all these years. Adam had his big brother back, and Sam had his little brother back. After four years of not knowing whether Sam was alive, I couldn't imagine feeling the amount of stress and fear Adam had been under, because I wasn't him; although I did feel worried about Sam, and stressed, too. Sam's like my big brother. But now they were reunited. We all were. That was all that mattered.

The sight of the brothers hugging made me happy. They deserve to be happy. After everything, with the Winchesters mother, and with Kate Milligan – Adam's mother – they did. Sometime in between 1989 and 1990, John went hunting a ghoul in Windom, Minnesota. 1990 was also the year Adam was born. When Adam was only four months old, Kate got slaughtered by the child of the ghoul (who was _also_ a ghoul, obviously; I didn't even know ghouls could have children), which prompted John to drive back to Windom to finish that bastard who killed her off. Since he was the biological father and the only remaining relative Adam had, the man had a legal obligation to look after his son, take care of him. So, he took Adam in and raised him to be a hunter, just like his half-brothers. Dean was eleven years old at the time, and Sam was seven. It took some time getting used to, but eventually it didn't matter if he was only "half Winchester", Sam and Dean treated him like he was _completely_ biologically related to them. I secretly think Sam was thrilled to have a younger brother.

A few weeks after he was brought into the Winchester family, Adam was considered to be a "full-blooded" Winchester; his maternal lineage didn't matter nor did the fact that John had an affair another woman, even though it had been years since his wife died (who he claimed to have "loved almost as much as Mary" - Sam and Dean's mother); he was still their little brother.

Months before Sam, Dean and John accepted Adam as "one of their own" according to Dean, John, Dean and Sam met Robert and Lauren Drake – oh, and their two daughters, Aubrey and Alyssa. I came along nine years later. A year later, when I was one, I met the Winchesters under extremely stressful and traumatizing circumstances. What happened?

Robert Drake's death happened.

Lis and I got out of the car while Bree stayed where she was, still reading _Goosebumps_ even if it annoyed her. We walked up to Sam, who pulled away from Adam's tight hug and grinned at us, his face lighting up slightly as he took us in. "Hey, girls." He broke away from Adam and hugged my big sisters first, then hugged me tightly. I hugged him back, my arms looped around his waist. I was only 5'1" and he was about 6'1" - and still growing. My sisters were both 5'6". "Good to see you three." He looked at Bree, who was now looking over at us. "Dad's missing, is that right?"

I nodded. "Yeah. We're gonna go find him."

Dean picked up his conversation from earlier. "So, what are you gonna do?" He asked Sam, walking over to the trunk of the car. Adam and the man in question followed him. Lis looped arms with my arm and pulled me over to the two quietly bickering siblings, wanting to get all the juicy details. I looked over at the Pontiac, to my sister. She had rolled the window's hand-crank down so she could still hear everything while reading. "Are you gonna just live some normal, apple-pie life? Is that it?" He sounded incredulous, and maybe a little angry.

Sam narrowed his eyes slightly. "No, not normal. Safe."

 _Safe_. I repeated slowly to myself, thinking the word over in my head. A former and quite badass hunter being safe? Away from hunting? When was the last time a hunter escaped the life we're in and hadn't gotten their guts torn out by some monster because they were out of practice? I hadn't heard of someone who had been in life dying of old age. But there are cases where hunters _do_ survive until they're over fifty or sixty, although that's very rare. My grandparents, who Lis, Bree and I have kept in contact with at John, our guardian's, approval, were the only hunters I've encountered in my fifteen years of life that were still alive and kicking. They took down some nasty monsters in their time, and now they live together happily in New York. You tend to die young in this profession.

Some a lot more than others.

"And that's why you ran away from the six of us." Adam mumbled, which caused his older brother to glance sharply at him. Dean hummed and looked rather annoyed, but I knew he was agreeing with Adam's statement. I understood why Sam would want to get the hell out of dodge, because this life wasn't exactly a cakewalk, but... he just left us without saying goodbye. That's what stung the most.

"I was just going to college." He answered. "It was Dad who said if I was gonna go, I should stay gone. And that's what I'm doing."

I broke from Lis's grip and leaned against the Impala, shoving my hands into my pockets. "John sounded like he was in real, serious trouble."

"Really?" He asked, glancing over at me. I nodded.

"If he's not dead already. I can feel it." Dean added morbidly. "I can't do this alone." He said in a slightly lighter tone.

Sam looked at him like he was insane. "Yes, you can, dude. Besides, you don't need me. You have Adam, Lis, Bree and Elena to help you. Why do you need me to look for him, too?"

"Please, Sam." I begged quietly, and I rarely beg – for anything. My sisters and friends know that. The older male sighed heavily, looking down at his feet. "We missed you."

"You know us. You know we did." Adam agreed. His tone was neutral. "Couldn't exactly tell you if they did," he motioned to our respective older siblings, "because they wouldn't talk about their damn feelings, but we," he motioned between him and I with a wave of his hand, "missed your ass more than anything. Need I remind you it's been four years since you skipped out on us."

He looked between us. After a moment of silence, he gave in. "What was he hunting?"

Adam's face lit up like a Christmas trees' lights being turned on. Lis and I shared a triumphant smile. He's back in the game! Gosh, that was exciting news. Dean opened Baby's trunk, shoved a duffel bag, four blankets, five pillows and a small first-aid kit out of the way (you can never be too careful on the road, and we tend to sleep in our cars a lot when there's no sign of a motel in sight and it's three in the morning), then pulled the fake part of the trunk up, revealing the massive collection of weapons and trinkets. Holy water, salt rounds, silver bullets, enough guns to make a collector's head spin, small boxes filled with many of the Winchester's fake IDs, the whole deal.

"Sweet, Sammy's back on the job. Don't get me wrong, this has been a fun little family reunion and all, but I'm gonna hit the hay. Good seeing you again, man," Adam said. He leaned forward, put down the weapons compartment of the trunk and grabbed one of the blankets and pillows, said a gruff "g'night" and then made his way back to the car, slamming the door shut loudly behind him. Bree looked over at him, raised an eyebrow, then went back to her book. Baby jostled and squeaked a little bit as he got comfortable.

"Uh, what's up with him?" Sam asked.

"He's a growing boy. He needs his sleep." Lis said, and Sam pursed his lips in thought.

"Let's see..." Dean mused, reaching for an item. "Where the hell did I put that thing?"

"So when Dad left, why didn't the five of you go with him?" He looked at all of us.

"We were working our own gigs." Dean answered, "I had this voodoo thing down in New Orleans. Adam was in Lafayette, taking down a vengeful spirit that wanted to shish-kebab her cheating former flame after he killed her. Pushed her in front of a bus. Nasty stuff. Got pretty depressing too, according to him. Bree was in Mississippi, hunting a Rugarus, Ellie was exorcising a small group of demons in Jackson, and Lis was dropping shapeshifters left and right in Tennessee."

Sam looked surprised. "Dad let you guys go on hunting trips by yourselves?" He paused to glance at me, then said: "He let our half-brother and the baby of the family hunt by themselves?" Despite being only twenty-eight days younger than Adam, I was still considered the baby of the family. I hated that nickname with a passion. Lis called me that, then everyone picked up on it (even Adam) and it stuck somewhere along the line. Ugh.

Dean looked over at him pointedly. " _I'm_ twenty-six, dude. The twins are old enough, too. Besides, Adam and Elena have our numbers saved as emergency contacts. If things got hairy, which they didn't, they know who to call. We would have raced over there to help them out the second they called about needing backup on their hunts." My sister hummed in agreement.

We've been hunting with the Winchesters basically all our lives. They consider us to be family, and we consider them to be family, too. We look out for each other. We protect each other and stick with each other, no matter how bad things got.

...Except for Sam running away to Stanford and the fact that we didn't contact him for four years, but that's a can of worms I'd rather _never_ go near.

He glanced down at the manila folder in his hands, and he perked up. "All right, here we go." He flipped it open and pulled out a couple sheets of paper that were filled with information of victims of the hunt we were heading to, skimming the information quickly. The recent victim's name was Theodore Chapman. I had reread his 'missing persons' poster and the article in the paper enough times and poured over the information given in the report to know his name without having to look at it. "So Dad was checking out this two-lane blacktop just outside of Jericho, California." He handed the sheets to him, "About a month ago, this guy – they found his car, but he'd vanished. Completely M.I.A." He wasn't some big up-and-coming rockstar or anything like that. He was an average guy with a house, a wife, three kids, a mortgage and bills to pay. It sucked that he went missing and left an undoubtedly grieving, confused family behind, but there wasn't much we could do about it now.

Sam looked at the guy's photo and said in a dry, dismissive voice: "So maybe he was kidnapped." I exchanged a look with my sister and Dean, letting out a sigh. He _really_ didn't want to go back to hunting. He wanted out of the life – for good.

"Yeah, well, there was another one in April." I piped up. "Another one in December '04, '03, '98, '92. You get the idea – ten of them over the past twenty years." Dean snatched the paper away from Sam and began putting them back into the folder. "All of the victims were men, and it all happened on the same five-mile stretch of road." The six – the six of us meaning Dean, Adam, Lis, Bree, John and I (not Sam obviously) – of us had previously agreed that there was no way in hell that was a coincidence.

He placed the folder back where he found it, then handed me another folder and I showed it to Sam. It was another male victim – Corey Hughes. A crappy job, no kids but a heartbroken wife. Sam glanced at his picture, and I could almost see the gears in his mind turning. _There's_ the Sam we grew up with, the one we know and love. "Started happening more and more," I continued, "so John went to go dig around. That was about three weeks ago. We hadn't heard from him since." Him going without checking in on us to make sure we were okay for that long is unusual and incredibly alarming.

"Which is bad enough," Dean added, then pulled out one of the many tape recorders he keeps in a few pouches that are stored in the weapons compartment of the car for "safekeeping", "And then I get this voicemail yesterday." He tapped the record players button that played the message, letting Sam hear it. I turned it out because I've already heard it twice.

John's voice came out heavily distorted, hard to hear. "Dean, Adam, girls, something is starting to happen. I think it's serious." The distortion grew progressively worse. "I need to try and figure out what's going on. Be very careful, Dean. We're all in danger. Lis, Bree, Dean, protect Adam and Ellie with your lives. I mean that." His voice was almost inaudible by the end. Dean's face grew serious at that last part, and Sam looked concerned yet curious about it, too. I grimaced. Those words stuck with me, as I'm sure they did Dean and my sisters.

"You know there's EVP on that?" That was the only thing Sam said. I was surprised he didn't ask about the whole "protect Adam and Ellie with your lives" bit, although I had a feeling the Winchesters would be talking about it during the car ride. I heard my siblings theorize about it a few times when they thought I was asleep.

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Not bad, Sammy." He sounds impressed. "Kind of like riding a bike, isn't it?" He rewound the tape. "Your nerdy female counterpart," – Bree – "got the idea to slow the message down and run it through a GoldWave, so that's what we did. We took out the hiss and this is what we got." He clicked the button that allowed him to go to the next tape that played the same message again, but this time with the modifications.

A woman's voice crackled to life. She sounded mournful and angry as she whispered creepily, "I can never go home."

Sam blinked, surprised. "Never go home." He repeated, raising an eyebrow at him. Dean nodded and stops the recording. He looked smug, like he knew that Sam was interested in the case at that point. He began putting everything away, his face morphing from being smug to looking extremely serious. He was probably thinking about what John had said about protecting us again and the fact that he'd vanished three weeks ago, and the only sign of life he'd given us was that weird voicemail. He closed the trunk firmly, but not loud or jostling enough to disturb Adam, even though he was probably dead to the world at that point. His ghost hunt went smoothly, although it definitely did a number on him, seeing as this was only his second solo hunt he's done in his life. The solo hunt I did was only my third solo one, so I could sympathize with him on that front.

Dean gave Sam one of those hard, unyielding, famous Winchester stare downs and shoved his hands into his faded blue jeans' pockets, which were washed out from use. I was shocked they hadn't fallen apart yet. "You know," He began calmly, "in four years, not one of us have bothered you, never asked you for a thing." He leaned against the car and looked at me, forest green eyes filled with empathy. "No matter how many times poor Elena's had nightmares about watching you get hurt – and almost _killed_ – in nasty ways because you were unsuspecting of the threat that loomed over your head or just out of practice, or how many panic attacks she's experienced in those three freaking years you've been away, living it up at college and hiding from us, your _family_." Now he sounded pissed. "Now, I don't have anxiety, but I can only imagine what it was like for her. A girl that I _consider_ to be my little sister." I tried not to wince. The oldest Winchester turned his attention to Adam and then over at our car, and his eyes landed on my sisters. Bree was still reading, and Lis was looking off to the side at the brick wall closest to her side of Black Widow - which Lis had lovingly nicknamed when she got the car in mint condition a couple years ago, as a gift from one of her very rich ex-boyfriends. Surprisingly enough, his father had the time and patience to teach her how to drive it, how to maintain it, and everything else in between.

She was trying to act like she wasn't listening, but I knew she was. When Dean continued, his voice was the same pitch.

"Or how many times Bree's had doubts that you'd ever want to ever see our faces again, and no matter how many times Adam's been worried sick about your wellbeing and cried over you because he missed his big brother, either. The kid tried his best to act like that crap never got to him, but it did. Everyone who so much as glanced at him could immediately tell that your leaving to go study how to effectively fight in a damn _courtroom_ crushed the hell out of his spirit."

Lis, who had been silent up until his outburst, added, "The three of us were overprotective of Elena and Adam for months. Barely let them out of our sights. Isn't that right?" John had been too, but I don't think she had to say it to imply that; Sam had to have picked up what she was putting down, as that expression goes. Her voice was a little louder so the lone Drake sibling that occupied our car could overhear her. I looked at Bree for her reaction, only to find that she was nodding right along with us. There's no way we'd deny it, not for a second. "We were worried that they'd try and hunt you down by themselves, get killed by a monster while _we_ chased them because they were chasing _your ass_."

Sam sighed and looked off to the side, so he didn't have to look at Dean, who was fuming, or Lis. Her periwinkle blue eyes were narrowed at him. I swear I could almost feel the guilt radiating off him. Dean's expression shifted, and now he was looking at him expectantly. "Alright, I'll go." Dean nodded stiffly. I had a feeling he didn't want to play that card, even though it worked. "I'll help you find him. But I have to get back first thing Monday. Just wait here." He turned around and began walking back to the apartment complex.

"What's first thing Monday?" I called after him.

He turned back to look at me. "I have an interview."

Dean frowned at the new information. "What, a job interview? Skip it."

Sam stared at him like he was insane. "It's a law school interview, and it's my whole future on a plate."

I almost scoffed.

"Law school." Dean repeated slowly, even though he already knew that. I had a feeling he couldn't imagine Sam as some big up-keep lawyer. To be fair, though, neither could I. I tried to picture it myself many times. Seeing him in a suit to defend insanely rich dirt-bags with his big, fancy Stanford law degree was difficult to imagine. He's taken down creatures like werewolves and demons his entire life and researched spirits and rifled through old books to learn more about whatever it was we were hunting. Defending a rich-dirt bag and having a normal life - a two-story house with a white picket fence - didn't seem like, well, _him_. It definitely didn't seem like the Sam I knew and had grown up with his entire life.

"So we got a deal or not?" The younger Winchester questioned, and my sister walked back over to Black Widow and plopped down into the driver's seat, muttering something to Bree, who didn't even look up from her book and barely responded. When Dean nodded, he said, "Let me just go pack my things and say goodbye to Jess."

I frowned at the foreign name and looked over at Dean. "Who the hell is Jess?" Sam ignored me.

He smirked a bit and sat down on the trunk of the Impala, watching Sam as he walked away. "Sam's honey-haired, brown-doe-eyed girlfriend."

I sat down next to him, surprised at the new information. "Really? She cute?"

He nodded, and the smirk grew wider. "She's not 'cute', peaches." I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at the old nickname. "She's hot."

"Crap. Well, think she'd want to date me or my sisters?" I asked in more of a joking way than a serious one.

His lips pulled up in a half-smirk, half-grin. "Probably not you, Elena, because you're only fifteen, and Jess would be in a crap ton of trouble if someone found out you and she were dating each other." Yeah. He nudged my shoulder with his own playfully, and we heard the metal gate open and close, signaling that Sam had made his way back inside to go pack his things. "Ah, the good old Drake twins and their very proud bisexual selves. You as well, El." There's no heat, mockery or disgust behind the words. He's not a biphobe, neither are Adam, Sam or John. We're not in the 1960's. _"As long as you're not bringing home monsters"_ , John had said after we came out to the Winchesters as bisexual (five and a half years ago for the twins and nearly two for me – I texted Sam that I was bisexual a few days after I came out to Adam, Dean and John. My sisters already knew, but I hadn't come out to them yet. Sam told me that he was proud of me for doing so), in a rare moment of tenderness, so rare that it was virtually nonexistent, _"I don't care who you find attractive. Proud of you girls for getting the courage to come out to us, though."_ "I think Sam might have a thing or two to say about that."

"That is just fantastic." I said evenly, managing to keep a straight face. "You think she's got a sister that's around my age?"

His responding laughter at my question made my chest warm.

We continued to talk for a bit, however, when I yawned, his big brother instincts kicked in. "Girlie, why don't you go ahead and catch some Z's?" He asked. For once, I didn't argue with him. I normally would have because I'm naturally stubborn like that, but it was late, I was still drained from my solo hunt, and we had a bit of a drive ahead of us. Dean slid off the back of the car and then motioned for me to do the same. As soon as my feet hit the pavement and I turned around, he opened the trunk and handed me a pillow and the comfiest blanket of the bunch. I didn't try to hand the items that had been given to me back, because I knew he wouldn't take them. He's naturally stubborn, too. We all are.

Guess it just runs in the Drake and Winchester families.

"Thanks." I murmured.

"No problem."

Tucking the pillow under my arm and then quickly draping the blanket he gave me around my shoulders, we said a quick "goodnight" to each other, and he kissed my forehead in a big brother kind of way. I went back to Black Widow. I popped open the trunk and grabbed another pillow, closing the trunk with my elbow. I yawned as I opened the door and slid inside, making myself at home, as it were. Thankfully, the seats were very comfortable. I was still drained from sitting in the car for God knows how long and my solo hunt. I hadn't gotten more than four hours of sleep in what felt like forever. I toed off my black Sperry Top-Siders and rested my feet against the white leather, propping my head up on both pillows for now.

I adjusted my position, so I was laying on my side instead of my back and staring right at the radio. Bree spoke up. "Sam's got a girlfriend?" She didn't turn to look at me; she was too enthralled in her book to do so.

"Yep." I said. "Dean also said that the three of us would theoretically have a shot at dating her if Mr. Fancy Attorney didn't have anything to say about it."

My sisters looked at each other, then Bree glanced back down at the page she was on. "Nice." They said simultaneously. Yeah. They tended to speak at the same time a lot. It's like twin intuition or something.

I laughed lightly, then closed my eyes. It was silent until the Impala roared to life immediately after I heard the passenger's car door open and close, signaling that Sam had gotten in. I'll admit that a very small part of me was worried that he would have stayed behind, therefore leaving us to go find John without his help. There's strength in numbers, after all. Although, if that had been the case, I would have roused Adam up from his sleep and stormed in after him, probably kicking the door down. I lifted my head up enough just to see that Dean was smirking egotistically at Lis, then revved Baby's engine. I wasn't surprised when I didn't hear Adam yell or at least jolt awake from the loud noises. He could sleep through a hurricane. My sister did the same with Black Widow's, and I could barely hear Dean's laughter over the engines. I groaned, grabbed the second pillow that I was resting on, and laid back down, placing the pillow on top of my head to block out the sounds of the two eldest siblings in our little dysfunctional family try to out-rev each other.

 _Damn the older Drakes and Winchesters egos. That is_ precisely _what's going to get someone killed one of these days._ I thought, and my vivid sky-blue eyes slowly closed. The cars rumbled away from the apartment building, and I fell into the lull of sleep almost immediately.

* * *

"Elena, wake up. Breakfast's on you today."

I moaned quietly as I was roused from my sleep by Bree's voice, lifting the pillow up from my head and smacking my lips together. Okay, ew. I needed to find some place to brush my teeth, and stat. "Bree, you go get food. I don't have any money on me." My voice was thick with sleep, and I sat up slowly, rolling my stiff shoulders. Soft morning light streamed through the window, and I took in my surroundings after I rubbed my eyes. We were sitting in a convenience store's parking lot, one that was clearly off the beaten path. People were milling around, getting gas, smoking, typing away on their phones or eating crappy gas station food against the walls of the store or at the red picnic tables that had seen better days. I saw some white-trash looking girl with her breasts basically hanging out of her short tank-top chatting up the older male cashier with graying hair inside, who looked completely uninterested in the fact that she was flashing him. I checked the dashboard's clock. It was 7:28 AM.

"That's a load of bull and you know it." ...Okay, so it was. I was just being lazy. "Go on." I itched my nose and sighed heavily, taking the hair-tie off my wrist and pulling my hair up. I didn't see the point in it. It was a hundred percent hot and probably a bit dusty outside. I would have combed my hair but seeing as I've been on the road for what is now, like, two days straight without showering. Thankfully, I had enough sense after my hunt to clean the blood from the demons off my clothes. My hair would have just been a greasy, disgusting mess that was combed.

Yeah. Being a hunter isn't glamorous.

"Fine." I said. "But food's not gonna be, like... from some fancy, delicate, insanely expensive French restaurant that offers three-course meals and all-you-can-eat desserts," I warned, even though they already knew that, "I'll just grab whatever's least likely to make our insides rot. Sound good?"

Alyssa scoffed. "That's straight up disappointing me, Ellie." She was a junk food addict. I hummed at my nickname (unlike my siblings I didn't hate my _real_ name so I didn't care what they called me), grabbed my wallet from my purse, then opened it up, checking to see how much money I had with me. Deciding I had enough, I slid my shoes back on my feet and opened the door. My legs were a little stiff, so it would be nice for me to stretch my legs. And get some sunshine on my face. I stepped out of the car and inhaled, immediately choking on dust that came from a rusting truck that was rumbling down the dirt street, which was in front of the convenience store. Adam was filling Baby up with gas, and Sam was looking at the collection of cassette tapes with an unamused look etched on his face. Neither brother looked like they slept much. Their brother was probably inside already. I wasn't exactly sure where we were in relation to Jericho, and I really didn't feel like trying to find a map or asking a stranger. Never know who you could trust. The person you're talking to might be a demon. This particular dusty, dirty old gas station in the middle of hot, sticky nowheresville would not be going on my list of top ten gas stations in the United States.

Ugh, I'd be scrubbing dust out of my skin and hair for days, not to mention the grease pit that my hair was currently in. I probably wasn't as cute as I thought I was. Hell, people might mistake me for a homeless person and give me cash.

I waved at Adam and Sam as I walked by the Impala, who waved back at me. I headed into the store. It wasn't much cooler in here, but it was a much needed and welcomed relief from the hot sun. I'll be the first one to admit: it was weird seeing Sam in the passenger's seat and not Adam. I had seen the youngest Winchester in it for four years (when John wasn't driving that is), so seeing Sam in it again would have to take some getting used to. Maybe a lot of getting used to.

...Oh. Wait. I almost forgot. He had to be back by Monday. Right.

 _Don't get your hopes up, Elena._ I thought to myself as I made my way over to the snacks isle. Since I wasn't sure where the heck we were, getting snacks was a priority. "Breakfast" would probably consist of buttered toast, fruit snacks or whatever else I could nab. I grabbed what I could, but I made two cups of coffee for Lis and Bree, and a hot chocolate for myself. I noticed Dean but didn't say anything to him about the hunt or the victims; not in public. There would be time later for that. I was still shopping as Dean was in line. He paid, and after taking a few moments of looking at the posters in the windows that boasted "lower prices than most convenience stores in the Western seaboard!", Dean walked out of the store. He waited for me, and I walked out right behind him with the bag in one arm and held a Styrofoam coffee cup holder with my left, inspecting what I had bought and determining which sister would want what. It wasn't exactly a buffet. We walked back up to the Impala. Adam was putting the gas pump back and using a credit card to pay, and Sam was glancing at a Black Sabbath cassette. Now that Dean was standing near Adam and Sam, I could see the resemblances, see why people thought Adam was a full-blooded Winchester rather than only half.

To be fair, though, Bree did say that Adam was the perfect mix of his big brothers last night.

"Hey, you want breakfast?" Dean asked, holding up the snacks he got for them. It was just a two liter can of Sprite, a bag of Doritos and a small packet of orange tangerine jolly ranchers. At least I had fared better with the coffee and hot chocolate.

Sam shook his head. "No thanks." Adam perked up and took the bag of Doritos from him, though.

"You have the breakfast of champions there, don't you, Deany-Beany?" I asked with a smirk, and he winked at me. I came up with that nickname when I was ten. He rolled his eyes. I chuckled lightly and walked back over to Black Widow, handing my sisters what I picked up for them through Bree's opened window. I handed them the two cups of coffee and quickly threw the Styrofoam holder out, then got in to Black Widow.

"Aw sweet, bread and peanut butter." Bree says flatly, and I chuckled when Lis looked at me through the hole in her donut. I leaned back in my seat and placed a napkin on my lap, then took out the loaf of white bread and the sticks of still-cold butter.

"Shut it and eat your breakfast."

I dug into mine, and my sisters followed suit.

* * *

The drive was long and frankly: incredibly boring. I downed my hot chocolate as soon as it was cool enough. Even if I hadn't drank it, I probably wouldn't have fallen asleep again. Lis began singing along to classic rock tunes shortly after we peeled out of the parking lot, and Bree had finished the Goosebumps book, but she was still bitching about it in typical Bree fashion. I wanted to reach over the driver's side, unlock the doors, unbuckle their seat-belts and boot them out of the car into oncoming traffic. They wouldn't just _shut up_. Which really sucked. I needed my sleep. Otherwise, I'd probably kill a man if he breathed weirdly. I'm cranky when I don't get enough sleep, or if I'm rudely interrupted from it. Although given my line of work, I was used to it. Didn't mean I had to like it, though.

...Yep. The badass, killing-creatures-that-go-bump-in-the-night-and-saving-innocent-people Drake sisters. The first eldest screaming along to rock songs and the second eldest bitching about children's books while the youngest was (constantly) sleep-deprived and she wanted to throw herself out of the car because they're annoying. Sounds about right.

I leaned forward, resting my forearms comfortably on the seat. "Are you two numb-skulls at all bothered by the fact that there was that creepy woman's voice? Because I am." I shuddered, making a face.

"Nope." Lis said. "It's just another day on the job, El. EVP is EVP, no matter how creepy it is, or which mouth it spews out of." She accelerated Black Widow's gas slightly when Dean sped Baby up, not wanting to lose sight of the car. Bree let out a groan and then book-marked the last page and threw it behind her, narrowly missing hitting me square in the face. It landed on the backseat with a dull thump. She was about to put her feet up on the dash when Lis took her right hand off the steering wheel and smacked her ankle - hard. "Feet do not belong on the dashboard, _Aubrey_." ...Awesome. I knew where this was going.

The use of her real named caused Bree to glare coldly at Lis, and they began to harmlessly bicker. However, that didn't make it any less annoying. Instead of jumping in to diffuse the situation, I simply groaned and leaned back into my seat, picking up the pillow and placing it in my lap before crossing my arms over my chest. They would've just ignored me or snapped at me that I was taking one side over the other. I did my best to tune the sounds of them bickering out by looking out the window and watching the trees zip by. They quieted down after a few moments, and I was slightly confused as to why they did until I looked straight ahead. It would take a nuclear war for them to stop bickering.

At a bridge ahead of us, there were two police cars and several officers milling around a crime scene. A blue car was parked near the left side of the bridge, and both the driver's seat and the passenger's seat were wide open. There was a yellow sign off to the left that said that the bridge was closed until further notice. There was an alternative route that led to the same destination about a mile back from where the six of us came from, just had to take a left on some other street rather than go straight like we did.

 _Yeah, no shit, Sherlock_. I thought.

Black Widow rolled up behind Baby and Lis cut the engine, and her hands reached up to make her ponytail tighter. Bree cleared her throat then popped open the glove compartment, taking out the small box that held our fake badges that we used for many occasions, opening it up and rifling through it. She handed us our fake federal marshals' badges, and we prayed that the Winchesters were on the same wavelength as us. Otherwise things would get very awkward extremely fast.

"The three of us don't have to go up there with them, do we?" Bree questioned, and I shook my head.

"No. That'd look way too suspicious. Rock-paper-scissors to determine who stays and who goes?"

My sisters nodded, and we began playing. Bree and I chose rock and Lis choice scissors. I still couldn't believe we used that game to determine stuff like this.

"Game faces on, children." Lis said in a condescending tone. I could tell that she was slightly annoyed at the fact that she didn't get to play fake marshal today. Ah, well. There's always another hunt somewhere in the country, probably right around the corner.

Bree's response was instantons. "Shut it."

I puffed out a breath and pushed open the car's door, shutting it behind me firmly. Lis locked Black Widow and we fell in line with the Winchesters, who were making their way toward the bridge. My "game face" mask slid into place easily. Adam and I might be a little _too_ young to pass as marshals, but with the crap we've seen (not to mention done) it's made us wise – no, not wise. Jaded. _Jaded_ beyond our years. And as we were only , so that should say a lot, or at least put up a red flag in someone's mind. But it doesn't for us. Bree's Brandeis-colored blue eyes cut over to the Winchesters. "Morning, fellas." Sam and Dean greeted her back with either a smile or a "hey". Adam was still in the car, probably sleeping with his body across the seats given that I couldn't see him sitting up. That boy sleeps more than the dead.

As we were walking up to crime scene, I heard: "Did you guys find anything?" A dark-skinned policeman called down below us.

"No, nothing!" A man called back, having to yell because of the distance and the flow of water from the river. We approached the car, catching the conversation a bit clearer now that we weren't so far away.

"No signs of struggle, no footprints, no fingerprints – spotless." Reported another police officer, who was crouched in front of the driver's seat with a perplexed look on his face. "It's almost too clean."

"So this kid Troy – he's dating your daughter, isn't he?" The first policeman asked.

"Yeah. She's putting up missing posters downtown." I raised an eyebrow at that information. Maybe I could find the girl and ask her about Troy's disappearance. One look at Sam, Dean and Lis told me that they were thinking the same thing I was. It wouldn't be the first time I was sent in to gather intel during a hunt. Since I'm youngest of the group, of course.

The first policeman nodded solemnly.

Dean was the first one to speak up. "You fellas had another one like this just last month, didn't you?"

The first policeman – who's name tag I could kind of see now that he was away from the victim's car – walked over to the side of the bridge, inspecting us. "And who are you?"

Dean and Lis took out their badges, holding them up for him to see. "Federal marshals." He answered evenly. I let out a small sigh of relief. Sam and Dean _had_ been thinking what we were thinking.

"You four are a little young for marshals, aren't you?" He asked curiously. "Especially you?" He nodded at me.

Dean laughed. "Thanks, that's awfully kind of you." He motioned for me to elaborate, so I jumped in.

I chuckled at the policeman's statement. "Trust me," I quickly glanced at the nameplate pinned to his shirt, "Deputy Jaffe. With the amount of head-spinning stuff we've seen in our days as marshals, it's made us extremely wise beyond our years." I pointed to my head for emphasis, giving him a grin that signified I was being self-deprecating. "Just up here, though." I snarked, but it was hidden in my grin. "We may look physically young, but that's just good genes. I thank my parents every day for giving me life and these genes."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Bree was nodding in agreement. I could tell from Sam's sudden, subtle shift in body language that he was ever-so-slightly surprised. I guess when you don't see a close friend for three years, it's a shock to see just how much that close friend's lying skills have developed. John said that I might even surpass _his_ skills in lying, which is a feat all on its own.

Dean walked closer to the car, inspecting it. "You did have another one just like this, correct?"

"And the victim's name was Troy?" Bree asked, wanting clarification.

"Yeah, that's right. About a mile up the road." Jaffe answered. "There've been others before that. I'm friends with his dad."

"So this victim." Sam said. For being an ex-hunter for three years, he kept a level head. Huh. I'd have to congratulate him on that later. "You knew him?"

Jaffe nodded. "Town like this, everybody knows everybody." That's how small towns usually are, so I didn't doubt that for a second.

I walked over to the driver's seat and stood next to Dean. "Any connection with the victims, besides that they're all men?"

"No. Not so far as we can tell."

Bree walked over to the trunk, inspecting the license plate with trained eyes. "So what's the theory?"

"Honestly, we don't know." He sounded annoyed by that, and I couldn't exactly blame him. Like being a hunter, being a policeman wasn't easy. Only difference is that policemen get paid and praised. hunters don't. "Serial murder, kidnap ring." Those didn't exactly sound plausible, but it was more normal than the truth the six of us knew of.

Dean chuckled. "Well, that is exactly the kind of crack police work I'd expect out of you guys." Uh-oh. I stomped on his foot, remaining cool. Sam and Bree wore matching frowns. I couldn't see them, but I had a feeling that Lis and Adam (or maybe just Lis) had been watching us. Had she been here, Lis probably would have elbowed him in the gut as hard as she could. Our dad was a former police officer. He had been up until his death. Disrespecting police officers when they're _trying_ to do their jobs is just a dick move.

At the officer's shocked expression, I quickly said, "Thank you for your time."

"Gentlemen." Sam said calmly, keeping his composure, and we walked away from the car, having gotten the information we needed. Getting out of there was also a priority. No need for this situation to get hairy. It shouldn't have _gotten_ hairy in the first place. Dean freaking Winchester and his arrogance.

As soon as we couldn't feel their eyes on us anymore, Dean punched my arm, hard enough for it to hurt.

I rubbed my arm but didn't face him. "Ow! What was that for?"

"Watch it. You know she bruises easily, Dean." Bree added with a shit-eating grin. Ugh. Now I wished I had volunteered to stay in the car and let Lis go.

He ignored my sister. "Why'd you have to step on my foot, Elena?" He hissed.

"Why do _you_ have to talk to the police like that?" I shot back, fuming.

He stopped walking, and we did too. Since Sam was behind him, he was forced to stop. "Come on." He said, looking incredulously at the three of us. We were wearing identical annoyed expressions. "They don't really know what's going on. We're all alone on this. I mean, if we're going to find Dad we've got to get to the bottom of this thing ourselves." Yeah, okay, but that shouldn't give you a free pass to be a dick-bag to law enforcement.

I stiffened when I saw the town's sheriff and two FBI agents standing behind him. A small rush of anxiety filtered through my system, like it always did. Being a hunter with anxiety seriously freaking stinks, but I could manage it. Dean turned around.

"Can I help you four?" The sheriff asked, placing his hands on his hips.

Bree shook her head. Her tone was polite but serious. "No, sir, we were just leaving."

The FBI agents nodded. As the two agents and the deputy walked past us to get a closer look at the crime scene, Dean muttered: "Agent Mulder. Agent Scully." I rolled my eyes but decided not to say anything, still gingerly rubbing my arm.

"Wanna head into town and check out this Amy chick? See if she knows anything?" Sam asked.

"Yeah." Bree said. "Meet you there. Oh, but first, let's get more caffeine. We're going to need it if this hunt keeps going at this pace." Sam and Dean agreed. We went back to our respective cars. After we got inside and buckled our seat belts, I gave Lis the rundown of what happened at the bridge, then Bree told Lis where we were going. Hey, it's nice to fill each other in one what the hell went down whilst someone was out of the loop. Common courtesy and all that. She nodded, took another sip of her cold coffee and started Black Widow up again, and her engine purred to life. I smiled. Black Widow would never let us down.

We began the drive into town in silence, which almost immediately allowed me to get lost in my own thoughts. I kept coming back to what John had told his son in his voicemail, completely ignoring what the grieving woman had said about never going home. John had always been protective of us, sure, maybe me even more so than Alyssa and Aubrey because I was the youngest.

But the fact that he wanted Dean and my sisters to protect Adam and I with their lives raised questions and theories. Huge ones.

Ones that I wasn't sure I'd like the answers to.

* * *

 **Word count:** **10,181** **.** **Last updated: 6/13/19.**


	2. A Coffee Break & a Late-Night Swim

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize. I only own my OCs, original plots/canon divergences [aka: original writing] (technically? I think? idk please don't sue me), and whatever else you don't recognize.**

 **Enjoy the second chapter of TRLT!**

* * *

 **Chapter Two: A Coffee Break & a Late-Night Swim**

 **aka: PILOT (part two)**

 **Location: Jericho, California.**

 **Date: November 1st, 2005.**

 **Elena's POV**

* * *

I leaned back in my seat, watching the landscape roll past the closed window. My mind was spinning with theories about the case we were currently on. The six of us agreed to head into town to chat with the locals to get a better idea of the victim (an example would be what he was like) and whatnot. This might take a while, and with John missing/ghosting us since his Hunting trip fresh in our minds, along with the warning about Adam and I directed at Dean, Alyssa and Aubrey, I felt like this was a distraction. A purposeful one, at that. Something to keep us busy while the real questions remained unanswered. We had more pressing issues to attend to than this Hunt.

On the other end of the spectrum, though, I knew that Hunting _is_ our job, that saving people from ugly things lurking in the shadows is what we do best. Even if being a Hunter is dangerous and thankless (it's extremely thankless, if I'm going to be honest), it still feels good to help people. People who might otherwise be six feet under if we hadn't rolled up into their town.

The music of one of Alyssa's "top thirty" (according to her) bands, Pink Floyd, filled the car, and the rumble of Black Widow's engine comforted me, like it always did. Black Widow might be a car, but she's our home away from crappy motel rooms in one-stoplight towns. Alyssa says that we can always rely on Black Widow, and Bree agrees with her. So do I. Speaking of Bree, she had her feet kicked up on the dashboard, inspecting her fingernails on her right hand, her left hand idly playing with her blonde hair. Lis was tapping along to the beat with her hands and humming along to the song. I grabbed the blanket I had accidentally kicked off the seats while getting into Black Widow after we investigated the crime scene on the bridge. After patting the pillow, I laid down, resting my head on the pillow, and spread the blanket across my body. I closed my eyes and sighed softly, my mind set on getting a few more minutes of shut-eye, because I don't get enough. Being a teenaged Hunter means you _never_ get the required, full hours of sleep you're supposed to every night. "But that's what naps are for." Adam had said once when Dean bitched about how much sleep we as a group collectively _don't_ get. The eldest Winchester usually gets four hours of sleep. It was even less when Sam ran away.

After about thirty seconds, the loud music (which had felt like it was making my ears bleed with how loud it had been) decreased in volume. It was a blessing to my ears. I could freaking think again and get back to focusing on sleep. I stretched my legs a bit, hoping I wouldn't get a cramp, because that would be very inconvenient. Not to mention annoying.

While I was mainly focusing on trying to get some sleep, I also wondered if Lis and Bree were going to talk about John's message or the case; swap theories on either of them. I'll be honest, I hoped they'd talk about the message over the case. Hey, what can I say? I'm a curious chick. Besides, John's message concerned me in more ways than one, given that it was _about_ me (and my best friend). Why did John say that? What does he want Dean, Lis and Bree to protect Adam and I from? What would trouble him so much that it would warrant such a dramatic phone call? He sounded troubled, so what could be so big that it shook even John Winchester, one of the best Hunters in America; a legend among Hunters? Did a ghost possess him and the warning isn't real; is the ghost simply trying to protect itself so we don't come after it? Those were some of the questions/theories I'd heard from my sisters. I don't know what Dean thinks about the message other than he's _deadly_ serious about it - or maybe that's the point, maybe he doesn't want to talk about it to keep Adam and I in the dark. Or maybe he's talked with Adam about it and they're both keeping a lid on their own questions/theories for my sake - probably so I don't have a full-blown panic attack over it or something. I'll admit, if that's what they're doing, it's considerate of them if that's the reason why they don't talk about it with my sisters, and why my sisters only talk about it when they think I'm asleep.

Bree sighed heavily. "I hate this."

"Hate what?" My eldest sister asked.

"Not knowing, like, anything. Where John is, what the hell the message on Dean's phone means. Any of it. I mean, all we have are theories and questions with no answers." I could almost feel the anger she felt radiating off her in waves, like it was a physical thing I could reach out and touch. Yeah, it sucks. Big time.

"I know you hate it, Bree. I hate it too. But being frustrated about it won't help us get any closer to the-the truth." Lis was oddly calm. Maybe she believed her own words and is keeping a level head _because_ she knows they're true.

Bree sighed heavily once more. "I hate it when you're right."

"Dude, I'm always right."

"That's a load of shit."

Lis hummed. "Sam and Dean are probably talking _with_ Adam about this. Three heads is better than two, right?" She paused. Then, she changed the subject so suddenly I nearly got whiplash. "Do you think Dean's still pissed at Sam for running away on his watch?"

"Oh, absolutely." Lis said. "Imagine if I ran away and left you to raise your fifteen-year-old brother - in your case it would be fifteen-year-old Elena, our sister - all by yourself."

"But they - Dean and Adam - weren't alone for the last four years. They had the three of us. They still do." Bree argued without any heat. She was simply making a point.

"No," Lis agreed, "they weren't alone. We were also there."

I opened my eyes. However, I kept quiet. It was silent in the car, save for the lowered volume of Pink Floyd's _Another Brick in the Wall_ and the rumble of Black Widow's engine, until Lis said a couple moments later: "Whatever we're supposed to keep Adam and Elena safe from... we'll do our damnedest to, right?"

"Of course we will," Bree agreed, "we'll do whatever it takes to keep them safe from whatever the hell John meant in his voice message." I watched Alyssa's head nod in agreement to Bree's words, and she shifted in her seat, turning her head to look at me. I quickly closed my eyes before she could tell I was awake and eavesdropping.

After a few seconds, I heard Alyssa shift in her seat, and she mumbled: "We don't just give up on Ellie." She sounded bitter, and I knew she was thinking about our mother. The mother who fucking abandoned us - for good. And right after our dad died, too.

If I ever see her again (and that's a _big_ "if"), I'll probably go into shock, punch her, get angry, cry, or... I have no idea. I won't welcome her back into my life with open arms, that's for damn sure. You don't just freaking abandon your three daughters with nothing - not even a goodbye. The last thing she did before abandoning us was LIE to us. This might sound extremely harsh, but if she's dead, I hope she's rotting in Hell. If my mom is alive and I somehow see her again, I... God, I don't know what I'd say first. But I do know this: I'd ask her why she left us on the motel steps of John Winchester's motel room, and if she regrets leaving us. We haven't had contact with her in years. Apparently, John tried to contact her a bunch of times, but she never picked up each time he called. Two weeks after she dropped my sisters and I off at John's door, she must have changed her number or her mailbox on her phone was full, because John stopped calling. John never told us what happened; why he stopped calling. Maybe he gave up. Maybe it was a combination of both of those things - maybe our mother changed her number/her mailbox was full (or she died) and John gave up.

Unfortunately, it's not like I could ask him now. He's missing (I refuse to believe he's dead) and probably, like, on the other side of the country. Wherever he is, I hope he's safe. I know he's an adult and that he knows how to take care of himself, it's just... if he's dead, I don't know what I'll do. I can't lose another person I care about, even though that's the price of this life and I can count the amount of people I care about on two hands. I'd throw myself in the line of fire for exactly six people: Adam, Sam, Dean, Alyssa, Aubrey and John. And I know in the very core of my soul that they feel the same way regarding each other and me - that we'd keep each other safe no matter what. I'd have to be an idiot/blind not to see it. Or maybe so conceited that I just don't care about them or anyone except myself. I'm not conceited, by the way. I like to think I'm not, anyway.

"I didn't say that we were going to, Alyssa." Bree's calm voice sliced through my thoughts like a hot knife through room-temperature butter, bringing me back to the present. "And we're not going to give up on Adam, either." Then, at the same time, they said:

"He's like our little brother."

"Yeah." Alyssa said after a second of silence, and I heard her fingers drum against the steering wheel. The blinker clicked on a couple moments later and we turned to the left. I had to steel my feet against the door and evenly distribute my body-weight between the bottom of the seats and the backs of the seats so I didn't slide out of my position. Thankfully, it worked.

I pulled the blanket up to my chin and then itched my chin, then behind my ear. I wouldn't let Lis and Bree know I was awake - not yet, at least. There were still some things I wanted to hear, like more questions/theories they might toss around, because honestly I was out of them. I had hit a dead end with questions I'd asked and mulled over in my own head, and theorizing was, quite frankly, getting old. I felt like if I didn't arrive at a credible answer with supporting details to back up said answer - and soon - my head would freaking explode or something.

"Hey, Ellie, wake up." Lis said, and as soon as I opened my eyes, something small-ish and cloth-like landed on the side of my body I wasn't resting on, right on my ribs. It was one of Bree's beanies - a gray one. I grabbed it, turning it over in my hands carefully. I sat up, slowly though. I frowned, my eyes flicking over to my sisters.

"What's this for?" I had my own beanies/hats I could grab and wear (those were located in the trunk, though), why did I need hers?

"Your hair is really greasy and knotted. It's disgusting." Lis said, making a face. I rolled my eyes and flipped her off. Lis and Bree had managed to "shower" a day ago while we stopped for a break from driving; at a rest stop on the highway to take a small break from driving - if you call dumping cold water from a water bottle on your head and neck "showering", which I don't. I had been asleep while they "showered".

" _Sorry_ we can't _all_ have perfect hair while we've been out on the road for days with only one break to wash up." I snarked in a flat voice, letting some annoyance filter across my face. Carefully, I slid the beanie on over my head. It was a little big on me, but I didn't mind and I certainly wasn't about to be picky. Besides, I'm used to it. I usually steal my sisters' jackets/sweatshirts/etc., t-shirts/shirts (mostly flannels), occasionally their small stud earrings (Hunting with jewelry like gigantic hoop earrings or big, dangly necklaces is a surefire way for an accident - aka an injury - to occur), and sometimes I'll steal their jeans.

"That's right, little sister," Lis said, and I could see her grinning in the rear-view mirror, "my hair is _always_ perfect." She flicked her hair over her shoulder for emphasis and I rolled my eyes once again. What a smug little shit. Not to mention, she's annoying. Oh, and dramatic.

After about five more minutes of driving, Lis said: "Hey Elena, there's a coffee shop just down the road. Decide fast, please; you want something else to eat or drink?"

I yawned - a genuine one. I quickly replied with, "I would like to make a pit-stop." Alyssa nodded. "We're looking for Troy's girlfriend, right?"

"Yep." My sisters chorused.

"Maybe she'll be at the coffee shop." It seemed like a good place to start tracking her down, anyway. Besides, I really wanted more hot chocolate, and from an actual coffee shop. Not from a gas station. I'd get a decent hot chocolate and potentially cross off talking to Troy's girlfriend at the same time. Why not take the opportunity when it's presented to me, right? Killing two birds with one stone is convenient. It'd be fine with me if she wasn't there - I'd still get my hot chocolate and maybe even a pastry/baked good. But it'd be delightful just to get that hot chocolate.

Yeah... I _might_ have an addiction to hot chocolate. It's freaking amazing. Don't judge me.

"Maybe." Lis said, shrugging. Black Widow rumbled down the road and the aforementioned shop came into view. She turned into the parking lot and parked the car, turning the engine off and unlocking the doors. As soon as the three of us piled out, we heard the unmistakable sound of the Impala's engine, and the sleek black car pulled into the parking lot. Dean cut the engine and the Winchester brothers hopped out a couple seconds later. I waved at the boys as they approached us.

Immediately, Dean motioned to the beanie I was wearing with a frown. "Elena, it's like seventy degrees and we're in California."

"Yeah," I said, "that's correct."

"So... why are you wearing a beanie?"

"Because my hair is a freaking mess, dude."

"It's fine." Adam, Sam and Dean said simultaneously.

I scoffed. "You wouldn't understand. You're men." In a purposefully snooty tone, I added: "A woman's hair is her best feature." My voice was dripping with sarcasm. That got four chuckles and a snort from Sam.

"I forgot how sarcastic you are." He said.

I grinned. "It runs in the Drake family." I patted my shoulder then fixed my hair, flicking the blonde waves over my shoulder. I spun on my heel and began walking towards the coffee shop. Five familiar pairs of footsteps followed after me. I looked up at the coffee shop's sign.

In large white letters the words _THE COFFEE SPOON_ was written underneath a white coffee cup, a white tea plate, and a small silver-colored spoon that stuck out of the coffee cup. Everything was behind a coffee-brown colored backdrop shaped to fit the cup, plate, spoon and letters perfectly. It was appropriate. I heard Dean hum quietly behind me, probably at the design of the sign. Before stepping inside, I took a look around the parking lot, which was mostly empty. My friends and sisters disappeared inside except for Adam, who was waiting for me; John had drilled it into his boys' and my sisters' heads to never leave me alone; someone had to watch my back, just in case. God forbid something was to happen to me because nobody was watching my back.

It had happened once when I was five years old. I had gotten separated from everyone and ended up wandering around, totally lost in the woods at night, during a hurt and a vampire fed from my neck and almost drained my five-year-old-self dry. Why John let Adam and I on the hunt when we were only five confused me - probably because no one could watch over us and he couldn't just leave us alone in the motel room. My sisters weren't with me, and Dean hadn't heard me scream because he was far away and it was raining, so it drowned out my screams. Sam and Adam were with John and none of them knew I was missing. Thankfully, Dean, who had just turned sixteen, had found me before I bled out. He killed that vampire quickly and cleanly. Now it'll never happen again. I had a feeling the coffee shop was bound to get busier within the next fifteen minutes or so, given the time of day. That made me uneasy. I don't do well with crowds - I hate them.

"Elena, are you coming?" Adam asked, and I turned around to see him holding the door open for me. I pulled my hair-tie off my wrist and pulled my hair up into a semi-low but tight ponytail.

"Coming." I said, the entered The Coffee Spoon.

The interior was that of a typical coffee shop. A small bookshelf was placed in the front left corner with a couple of plush chairs sat near it, surrounding a heavy wooden coffee table with a huge tasteful rug underneath the coffee table, probably to keep the legs from wobbling. Lights were strategically placed throughout the shop, and tables and chairs lined the walls and were logically placed around the entire room, with everything essential placed elsewhere - and once again: logically. There was a sign that pointed to the bathrooms, which were located in the back of the establishment. Lively music played at a low volume on speakers that were located overhead, mixing with the sounds of conversations, machinery, and the register pinging. A decent amount of tables were occupied by men, women and children of all ages, hair colors and hairstyles, but most of the women had the hairstyle that's currently trendy/popular: long and straight. I've contemplated cutting my waist-length hair shorter, just so monsters can't grab my hair and yank me towards them or something, thereby using my hair to their advantage. But I also like my hair long. Maybe, in a few years, I'll cut my hair. That's a pretty big "maybe", though. Given my line of work, I'll probably be dead before I'm thirty. If that.

 _That's a comforting thought._ I thought to myself, making a face. I quickly pushed the thought out of my head, not wanting to linger on it, because the more I thought about it, the darker my next upsetting thought might be; it could be even more dark than the one I just tried to stop thinking about, I mean. Ugh. No thanks.

"Do all six of us need to go up and order?" Adam asked, watching as man with blond frosted-tipped hair take his iced coffee and typical white-paper pastry bag, moving past the six of us. We were still standing near the entrance.

"No." I said, and the Winchesters and my sisters made various sounds/words that sounded like _"no"_ as well.

"How are we gonna decide who gets to go up to the counter and pay for everyone's drinks and/or unhealthy pastries/baked goods?" Bree asked. Lis and Dean glanced at each other, and Lis raised her eyebrow. At the same time, they threw their hands up for a _riveting_ game of rock-paper-scissors. Wow. It turns out that when I don't have a decent cup of hot chocolate that doesn't come from a gas station, I'm cranky and even more sarcastic. Who would have thought?

Sam raised an eyebrow. "They still use this game to make decisions?"

"Yeah." Bree said, watching as our sister and best friend began to duke it out for who gets to pay and who gets bragging rights to hold as leverage over the other in Lis and Dean's ongoing friendly rivalry, which has spanned back years. Judging by the looks on their faces, they meant business. Adam looked amused, and Bree and Sam rolled their eyes. I was somewhere in between the two different expressions that my sister and two out of three best friends had.

"Do Adam and Ellie still use it?" Sam asked.

"Yep." Adam said, scratching his head with the hand that wasn't holding the pen.

"I know I've been gone for four years, but they're still like children." Sam said seriously, but I could tell he was trying to fight back a smile.

"I heard that." Lis muttered, but didn't turn around because she threw rock. Dean threw scissors. Immediately, his confident/serious expression deflated into a defeated and surprised one, and he fished his wallet out of his pocket. He grumbled to himself for using scissors, and Adam patted his shoulder twice, smirking. Lis and Bree fist-bumped and I high-fived my sister when she put her hand up.

He glanced around at us, and his grin was forced as he asked: "What does everyone want?"

* * *

I sat down in one of the padded, plush chairs at the unoccupied coffee table. Out of sheer boredom I counted the chairs - eight. I felt silly for doing it right after. It's not like the chairs would suddenly come to life and walk out of The Coffee Spoon.

My sisters and the two younger Winchester brothers were sitting in the other plush chairs, waiting for Dean to return with our drinks. Sam was sitting across from me in the right chair, Bree was sitting next to Sam, Adam was sitting in between them, and Alyssa was lounging in another seat, her feet kicked up on the coffee table. Adam was writing in his journal, a small spiral notebook Dean had gotten him for his fourteenth birthday. He hasn't written in it much, but he always gets this focused look on his face whenever he took the time to actually write. Meanwhile, Sam kept looking down at his phone. He might have been away at college for four years, but I could tell he was worried about something. I could still read him like a book. I'm sure everyone else could, too.

"Sam?" I asked gently. "Are you okay?"

"I feel like I have to call Jess, but..." he trailed off.

Adam glanced up from his notebook, absentmindedly clicking his pen off and on a few times before capping it and placing it behind his ear. He shifted in his seat. "But what?"

The elder Winchester ran his fingers through his hair, briefly glancing at his brother before looking at all of us dead-on. "No, I'm sure i-it's nothing. I'm probably just being paranoid. Besides, she has classes in the morning, so I probably shouldn't bother her..." his voice died out as he contemplated it.

Lis reached over and gave his shoulder a couple comforting pats. "Go call your girlfriend, Sam. You want to make sure she's okay, right? That's a natural response, and I'm sure you haven't been this far away from her in a while." She joked, and Sam cracked a small smile at the tension breaker. "Go call her and put your paranoia/worries to rest."

"Yeah," Bree added, "it's probably not a smart idea if you're split three ways between worrying about John, Jessica and the case. You have the ability to put your mind to rest about one of those three things, so take it. Besides, we need you sharp for this case."

He glanced over at Adam for a third opinion. Adam gave him an encouraging nod.

I decided to throw my two cents in, just in case he needed one more push to go do it. I cracked my knuckles and hummed in agreement. "It's what I would do." I'm sure Dean would say the same thing if he overheard us.

Sam contemplated the options in his head for a while, fiddling with his phone, deep in thought. I knew he was weighing the pros and cons. The pros _definitely_ outweighed the cons, because eventually, and without a word, he stood up and left, but we could still clearly see him through the many windows of The Coffee Spoon. He was pacing a bit as he dialed her number.

"Phillip!" I heard the barista call loudly. Adam snorted when Dean stepped forward to grab the drinks that had been placed on the pick-up counter, grabbing a Styrofoam cup holder from the counter. I perked up when he walked towards us, holding four out of the six drinks he got for us.

"Two large coffees for the twins..." he handed my sisters their drinks, "one iced coffee for Adam..." he listed, and Adam took his drink from his brother with a thankful nod. He took a sip out of the large drink and leaned back in his seat, practically melting into it. "And finally, one large hot chocolate with whipped cream for Elena." Dean handed me my drink and I said "thank you" quietly as I wrapped my hands tighter around my cup, taking a deep breath and relaxing as I felt the warmth of it. Bree popped the lid off her coffee, glancing at Alyssa, who immediately handed her twin her cup.

"Do you want the usual amount of cream and sugar in your coffee, Lis?"

"Yes please." She said, and Bree stood up, heading over to the table near the pick-up station that held the hot coffee sleeves, napkins, cream, sugar, milk and hot coffee lids. I glanced at the bag of pastries Bree had set on the coffee table before getting up. Adam frowned at Dean.

"You _cannot_ pull off a Phillip, big brother."

Dean shrugged. "Shut it, man. Drink your coffee." There was no heat behind his words. A few moments later, his "name" was called once again, and he moved to go collect the drinks he got for himself and Sam, who was still outside, talking to Jess. Lis put her feet down onto the ground and stood up, moving towards the bathrooms. Adam stared at me. I must have looked stress (I was) because he moved from his seat and sat down in the one next to mine.

"You okay, Elena?" He asked, his blue eyes searching my face.

I thought about it. Was I okay? No, not really. There's so much stressing me out right now it's unreal. It's a wonder I haven't cracked yet. But, the thoughts about my mother put me in a bad mood. Still, though, I said, "I'm good. Just worried about John."

He nodded. "Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm worried about my Dad, too."

I debated talking about my mother to him. A part of me said that I should talk about my thoughts and/or feelings rather than bottling them up, a trademark of the Drake sisters and Winchester brothers, but another part of me said that I shouldn't open up old wounds. He might be able to sympathize/empathize with me, given that he lost his mother at a young age (even though she died, my own mother is practically dead to me in my eyes, it doesn't matter if she's physically dead or not. I never want to see that woman again.)

"Is that all you're worried about, though?" He asked, shaking his iced coffee around in a circle for a few moments to get the flavor evenly distributed throughout the cup (I noticed that the syrup had settled at the bottom). I brought my hand up to rub my left eye before taking a long drink of my hot chocolate, feeling the drink travel down into my stomach and settle there. It calmed me down slightly.

"I just thought about my Mom." I said quietly.

He nodded again, slower this time. "Do you..." he paused, as if thinking of what to say next, "do you want to vent about her to me? I'm always here if you need someone to ramble to." I knew that he was, and that's one of the things I love about him.

I nodded then let out a long sigh, beginning to sift through my mind in order to find a good place to start. Unsurprisingly, the subject of Lauren Drake is a touchy one for the Drake sisters. It reopens old wounds that may or may not have healed over - at least for me, the psychological scars she left on me when she abandoned us haven't healed. I don't know about my sisters' scars. I can't speak for them. After a couple seconds, I settled on what I wanted to say. I figured I'd start with why I'm thinking about her in the first place and go from there.

* * *

 **Sam's POV**

* * *

I made my way out of The Coffee Spoon and opened my phone, pacing back and forth, my feet scraping against the blacktop. I searched through my contact list until I found Jess' contact, hitting it. I smiled when I saw her picture, which was taken back in March. I love her so much. I tapped the call button, and the line rang. For a few seconds, I was worried she wouldn't pick up and my paranoia/worry about her well-being would skyrocket. However, she picked up on the last ring, and the line connected.

"Hey Sam." She said. Her voice was a little deeper than usual. She probably just woke up a few minutes ago and was still half-asleep.

I relaxed as soon as I heard her voice. "Hi, babe." I greeted cheerily.

"What's up?"

"I just wanted to check up on you - make sure you were up to get ready for your nine AM class. I know how you like to sleep in."

She laughed, and I swear it was like an Angel's laugh. Smooth, sweet and pure, like syrup or honey. I loved her laugh. "Oh, you're like my personal alarm clock, huh?"

"You bet, Jessica Moore." I said.

"How sweet of you, Sam Winchester." She giggled. "I'm up. In my defense, I am a _college student_. We like to sleep, don't we?" That was true. "We like to sleep. Well, everyone except for _you_ , Mr. I-pull-all-nighters-all-the-time-and-I'm-somehow-able-to-function-like-a-normal-human-being."

I chuckled at her teasing. Her words are one hundred percent true, though. The amount of all-nighters I've pulled both in law school and on Hunts - either researching the next thing that goes bump in the night or cracking down on the law textbooks that are very overpriced but educational - are really up there.

"Are you jealous, Jess?" I stopped pacing, unable to help a grin from breaking out on my face. "Because that's what it sounds like to me."

"I can promise you I'm not."

"Sure, babe. Anyway, is Brady still coming over to help you study for that big test you have next week?"

"I hope so." She said. "You know how different he's been lately." I did know. He's been different sophomore year. "You've been trying so hard to keep him on the straight-and-narrow, and I love you for that, Sam, but he might need professional help. You know? More than we can provide."

I nodded, then realized she couldn't see me. I would drag my friend's ass to therapy myself if I had to, if it meant Brady got better. I'm not going to give up on him. He's a close friend of mine.

The door to The Coffee Spoon opened, and I turned around to find Bree standing there, her eyebrow raised. "Dean's got your coffee, dude." She was holding two cups herself.

I smiled at the blonde then said into the phone: "Go kick today in the ass, babe. I know you can do it."

"I will, Sam. Call me if there's any updates on your Dad, alright? I'd love to meet him some day. It's only fair, right, because you've met my parents and the rest of my family a lot. I'd love to meet your younger brother and those best friends of yours that Dean mentioned."

I laughed. "I'll keep that in mind. I gotta go. Coffee's here. Bye, Jess. I love you," my voice went soft when I told her I loved her. I do love her - very much. "I'll talk to you later." I added, promising myself I would.

"I love you too, Sam." She said gently, her voice filled with so much love I could have drowned in it, and I gladly would have. "I'll be looking forward to that phone call or text. Bye." She hung up. I pulled my phone away from my ear and shut it, shoving it into the pocket of my jeans. Bree was staring at me, her face a mixture of happiness and adored.

"That was cute. You must really love this girl, huh?"

I nodded. She was one-hundred-percent correct. I'm going to ask her to marry me as soon as we graduate college. I already have a ring picked out; I bought it three days ago. I see a future with Jess, and it's a happy, normal, _safe_ one, free of demons and monsters. "Yeah," I answered, "I do love her."

Bree hummed. "That's sweet. Come on, let's head back inside before our drinks get cold."

I followed one of my best friends back into the establishment. My two other best friends were sitting in the same places they had been when I left. Now, Dean was sitting Adam previously sat in, and Adam was sitting in the chair next to Elena. Alyssa was sitting next next to Dean, and when Bree sat down, I sat down next to her. Dean handed me my drink.

I smiled at him a bit. "Thank you."

"No problem. I got you what you usually ordered, you know, before you went to Stanford." He cleared his throat. I tried to ignore the fact that his words were passive-aggressive. I saw discomfort flicker across Adam's face for a couple seconds. "I-I didn't know if your coffee habits changed or not in four years you've been gone, so I just kind of guessed." He said, leaning back in his seat, taking a small, tentative sip of his own drink. Aubrey handed Alyssa her coffee.

Ellie cocked her head to the side a bit, and I knew that if her blonde hair wasn't up in a tight ponytail and hidden by a slightly over-sized beanie, they would have spilled down her shoulder and just barely extended towards her stomach or thighs. "Did Jess pick up?" She appeared to be slightly distracted by something. I didn't want to pry, but my gut told me that it was because of everything that's going on.

"Yep," I replied, "she did." I looked around at the group. "Do you guys want to discuss the case now? Or Dad's message." I added quickly.

Dean shook his head and silently pointed to his coffee cup, making a tired face. "Let's take a little break and drink and eat first, Sammy," I rolled my eyes at the use of my nickname, "okay?" He mumbled. "Relax first. Work later. Oh, and we can focus on Dad's message after the case is over. But not as Drakes and Winchesters separately. Let's figure it out together. Sound good?"

Lis held up her hand. "I agree with him." She motioned towards Dean with a lazy flick of her hand, downing most of her drink in one gulp.

Adam, Ellie and Bree verbally agreed with my brother - they were on Dean's side, of course. I didn't feel like protesting, so I simply nodded.

The six of us lapsed into comfortable silence after that.

* * *

I couldn't help but notice that Ellie was massively upset over something all throughout breakfast. She isn't usually chatty, especially not in the morning before the hot chocolate she drinks by the tub-full daily kicks in, but she's had one already at the gas station and she isn't her normal self. Whatever she talked with Adam about made her more than a little upset, that much is clear. It threw off her entire presence, where I once found comfort, I only found worry. I made a mental note to ask Adam about what they obviously talked about in public-private later, mainly because I did not want to upset Ellie or honestly let her know I was fussing over her. She's damn good at reading people, so I would have to be careful. The reason why I didn't want Ellie was because she already looked majorly stressed out, and my concern over her might stress her out even more. She might try to slap a facade on, one that screams _everything's fine, don't worry about me, I'm okay_ , which would drain her. It's something the youngest Drake sister is particularly well-versed in. She's like a professional at hiding her emotions from others while tearing herself apart raw when no one is looking, open wounds bleeding and tearing her soul and emotional and mental health to shreds.

Dean and the twins must have noticed her change in mood too, because they kept looking at her and Adam when they weren't paying attention.

We spent about thirty minutes in the coffee shop, eating, drinking, relaxing and talking about anything and everything _except_ the case and Dad's ominous message. The Drake sisters talked about the cases they solved by themselves; Elena went more into depth about her Demon Hunt, how she saved a family of four and a group of people who had been friends since their high school days. I wouldn't lie, I was proud of her for being so efficient at her job, especially since she was young. She's freaking awesome.

Adam told me that he could officially pick a lock quicker than Aubrey could, and with minimal tools (he didn't need the fancy lock-pick set anymore, he could pick a lock with a bobby pin now), and she smacked the back of his head lightly and grumbled to herself, which only confirmed that he was, in fact, a better lock-picker than she was. That both surprised me and made me proud of Adam's achievement; picking a lock isn't exactly easy. I'm sure the only person that surpassed Adam's skills was Dad, but I didn't know that for sure, because no one mentioned him throughout the many different conversations they had. They seemed to avoid the word "Dad" entirely. Dean looked proud of our brother and the baby of the group, as they spoke, occasionally cracking jokes or making smart-ass comments at Ellie and Adam's expenses, but I knew by the expression on his face that it was all in good fun.

Listening to how they talked to each other and praised one another whenever they could, I honestly... well, I'll admit that I felt a little out of place at times. I had left and fucked up the dynamic we had created all those years ago, but I couldn't help the way I felt about that. I know I had screwed up in more ways than one. After I left, they grew closer while I drifted apart from them. I believed Dean when he yelled at me last night, saying that Adam and Ellie had nightmares about watching me get hurt or killed. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that it _wasn't_ true.

Once we were done talking (well, I mainly listened), everyone gathered their trash and disposed of it. Lis grabbed some more baked goods and bottles of water for the road while Ellie and Bree went to use the bathroom. Adam and Dean walked out of The Coffee Spoon and out into the world. The sun was hidden by clouds (and had been for a while), but it was still warm out. It was damn near uncomfortably warm. I already knew that the Drake sisters wouldn't like the mugginess, even if they had to grin and bear it. I could visualize Elena's exasperated eye-roll in my head already, hear her complaining about not having thin enough blood to stand the Californian heat.

I chuckled to myself as I adjusted the collar of my jacket, then quickly unzipped it as I made my way back to Baby. Dean and Adam were hot on my heels, the former humming the lyrics to a Black Sabbath tune, the latter jotting down a note or something in his notebook.

Dean hopped into the driver's seat, and I slid into the passenger's seat. Adam sat down in the back, and the familiar creak of the Impala's doors comforted me. We didn't move, we just sat in the car, lost in our own thoughts. After what felt like an eternity, I sorted through at least half of my thoughts. I'd figure I'd start with what Adam and Elena were talking about, and why Ellie looked so distressed when I came back. I told myself to remain an impartial judge if they had a fight about something huge.

"Adam?"

Both Dean and Adam looked over at me. My older brother blinked.

"Yeah, dude?" Adam asked.

"What was... what happened between you and Elena while it was just the two of you? Did... did something happen between you two?" I looked at him in the rear-view mirror. He looked up from his notebook, and he was clearly caught off guard and confused at the question, because my brother frowned.

"What are you talking about? Nothing…" realization filtered across his face a second later. "Oh. Nothing happened between _us_."

Dean scowled. "Then... what did happen?"

Adam sighed heavily, swallowing audibly. "I... I'll tell you later, okay? When we've made a dent in this case, okay? Oh, and when none of the sisters are around. When it's just... when it's just the three of us, and when we're not hunting." Adam met my eyes, paused, then mumbled: "Before Sam goes back, though."

Dean and I exchanged glances.

"You promise?" Dean asked. Adam nodded.

"Yeah. I do."

He hummed, tapping his hands against the steering wheel, mumbling: "Okay. Sounds good to me."

* * *

 **Dean's POV**

* * *

I rolled up to a parking spot at a curb and quickly parked Baby. Black Widow pulled up next to Baby and parked behind us and in front of an mid 1990's car, and the girls climbed out of their trusty car a couple moments after the three of us exited Baby.

I glanced up at the marquee on the Highland Movie Theater, and I noticed that it read: "EMERGENCY TOWN HALL MEETING, SUNDAY 8 PM. BE SAFE OUT THERE."

Huh. The townspeople are scared, probably shitless; I don't blame them.

A young woman is tacking up posters with Troy's face and the caption "MISSING TROY SQUIRE". The six of us began to approach the young woman, fanning out next to and walking in pairs of threes behind or beside me. Adam, Elena and Bree walked behind me, while Lis and Sam walked next to me, Sam on my left side, Lis on my right side. Elena walked directly behind me, Bree behind Adam, and Bree behind her twin.

"I'll bet you that's her." I said, and Sam nodded.

"Yeah." He agreed, then inhaled deeply. "So, do you want to try and pass as uncles, aunts and cousins of Troy's?"

"Yeah." "Yep." "Sure." "Sounds good to me." Came four responses. The only one who didn't say anything was Elena.

Alyssa, Aubrey, Adam, Sam and I began to walk up to the young woman, but all the sudden, a hand gripped the back of my jacket and yanked me backwards, and I coughed slightly, more out of surprise than anything.

"Woah, cool your jets, Hasselhoff." Elena's voice rang out, loud and clear. It seemed whatever my brother and she had talked about, the thing that had bothered her, was forgotten - for now, at least.

I turned around and faced my friend, ignoring the fact that she called me Hasselhoff. "What? What's wrong?" I asked.

"No offense, Dean, but you, Sam and my sisters are kind of intimidating. Not to mention, a little too old to pass as friends of Troy, and a little too _young_ to pass as uncles and aunts of Troy's, not to mention, this Amy chick might have met his family already." I blinked, not exactly sure if I should take that as a compliment or an insult. By the looks on their faces, I could tell my brother and the twins felt like I did - unsure of how to take that statement. "Suddenly coming out of the blue and saying that you're uncles and/or aunts of a missing person that a girl knows well might raise red flags.

But a teenaged girl and her _boyfriend_ , who are just casually passing through town while they're on a romantic, couple-month-long road trip/get away from their one-stoplight town," the blonde looked pointedly at Adam, whose eyes went comically wide at the implication that they'd be pretending to be a couple (the twins, Sam and I tried - and failed epically - to hide our smirks), "casually running into another girl and her friend, noticing the posters they had hung up around town and expressing their concern for said missing townie boyfriend, potentially catching up on some of the local gossip around town? The girlfriend quickly but subtly - therefore _effectively_ \- empathizing with the girl about not being able to bear losing her boyfriend while holding him close, and the boyfriend reassuring the girl that they'll be happy together once again, just like the girl and he are - they just have to have hope and keep searching until they bring him home? That kind of thing happens more often than you'd think."

After taking a few moments to think her words over, I realized she was right. A couple glances at my friends, Adam and Sam confirmed that they agreed with her words.

"Go for it." Lis said, giving her younger sibling an encouraging nod.

Ellie's eyes brightened for a couple seconds, like she was happy her plan got approved by Lis. She ushered us (minus Adam) back over to the Pontiac then told us to "act natural", whatever that entailed. I think she just wanted us to observe with keen eyes as Elena and Adam chatted with the two girls.

Hell, maybe I'll even give them a rating of one-through-ten.

The blonde took a deep breath and grabbed Adam's hand, whose face screamed that he still had the whole deer-in-the-headlights look on it. I was pretty sure his brain had melted and he was just an empty shell of a man, completely shocked to his core (is it _not_ obvious that Adam had a gigantic friggin' crush on her?) until Ellie jolted him back to reality.

I would _definitely_ tease him about this situation after this case is over, because that's the kind of big brother I am.

Sam, Bree, Lis and I watched as the two approached the girls, Elena's hand slipping into Adam's naturally as the girls began talking, Adam nodding along wherever it was appropriate. Bree hummed softly when Ellie put a hand on her shoulder, her tone going soft and quiet. She pulled Adam close and he untangled their hands so he could wrap his arm around her shoulder, pulling her into him. She even rested her head on his shoulder. I couldn't see their expressions because their backs were turned towards me, but I had a feeling that Adam and Ellie's faces were etched in empathy.

Honestly, it was a sight to see. Elena and the girls talked like they've been friends for years rather than just so happened to "randomly" meet on the street.

I hummed. I give their performance a nine out of ten. Although Elena gets all the credit because she thought of it.

My mind unintentionally drifted towards thoughts about my Dad, as I busied myself with them until I was brought out by them when I heard Adam say something about "friends", then turn and point to us. My head snapped up when Amy and her friend.

Adam introduced us. "Amy, Rachel-" that was the friend's name, "these are our friends Lis, Bree, Sam and Dean. Guys, this is Amy," she pointed to the girl, "and this is Rachel." He motioned to the other one. "We're all kind of road-tripping together, but in separate vehicles." He lied smoothly. "Just so we don't kill each other." He joked, approaching us with Amy, Rachel and Ellie walking up two steps behind him.

The two girls waved in greeting, and we all said variations of "hi", although Bree waved at them.

"Are you guys hungry?" Rachel asked. "There's a diner across the street that... we could also give you some information about Troy there, um, if you'd like."

I perked up. Hell yes.

"That would be amazing." Sam said cheerily, giving the girls a comforting smile.

Another MISSING TROY SQUIRE poster flapped in the breeze as we followed Amy and Rachel, and they led us to a small diner across the street from the theater - not the one we had eaten breakfast at, but a different one. The only thing the six of us ordered was ice water, while Amy and Rachel ordered Cokes with ice.

Amy and Rachel sat across from us in a booth. "Us" being myself and Sam. Adam was sitting at the end of the table. Even though it was just Sam and I at the table, we were a little squished together on that one side of the table. I was slightly annoyed at the fact. _Goddamn Sasquatch._ I thought to myself. Lis, Bree and Ellie were sitting at the table behind the two Jericho locals, their chairs turned towards us. They were leaning over slightly so they could hear us and engage in the conversation when necessary.

"Um... where should I start?" Amy asked, uncertain. Elena gently placed her hand on the other girl's shoulder. Amy looked back at her, her eyes searching the teen's face for guidance.

"Start with how you had a feeling that something was wrong." She advised gently.

"I was on the phone with Troy." Amy began. "He was driving home. He said he would call me right back, and..." she takes a deep breath, "he never did."

"He didn't say anything strange, or out of the ordinary?" Bree asked.

Amy shook her head, glancing backwards at the younger twin. "No. Nothing I can remember."

"I like your necklace." Sam said quietly, and a little out of the blue.

Amy reached towards the the pendant she's wearing, a pentagram in a circle. She held it carefully in her fingers and looked down at it.

"Troy gave it to me." She said softly. "Mostly to scare my parents—" she laughed, "with all that devil stuff."

Sam laughed a little and looks down, then up. Adam, the girls and I looked over at him.

"Actually, it means just the opposite. A pentagram is protection against evil. Really powerful. I mean, if you believe in that kind of thing."

"Okay. Thank you, Unsolved Mysteries." I said, my tone deadpan. Lis snickered, and I saw Bree and Ellie exchange glances, shaking their heads slightly at my sarcasm. Sam rolled his eyes and Adam sighed in exasperation before taking a sip of his water. I can't exactly turn my sarcastic side off whenever Sammy says something like that, it's a natural reaction - hell, something ingrained into my personality at this point. Maybe it was "acting up" around him right now because I still harbored a grudge over him leaving for Stanford.

I took my arm off the back of Sam's seat and leaned forward, my face deadly serious. "Here's the deal, ladies. The way Troy disappeared, something's not right. So if you've heard anything..."

The two girls looked at each other, and I could see the hesitance in their expressions.

"What is it?" Adam asked, eyes cutting back and forth between the two girls, as if he was trying to read their minds.

Rachel drummed her pale fingers against the table a couple times, which I picked up as a nervous habit. That's something Elena does when she's nervous. She fidgets - which may or may not be a result of her attention deficit hyperactivity disorder predominantly inattentive, or ADD, which she had been formally diagnosed for when she was a baby. She doesn't take medication for it. Hunters can't exactly afford medication. The only reason I know this is because Lauren and David Drake, the girls' mother and father respectively, disclosed this information about her to us, the Winchesters. David claimed that this was something important to take note of. So that's exactly what my Dad did - he researched ADD further and took extra time to help train Ellie to become the badass Hunter she is today.

"Well, it's just..." I snapped back to the present at the sound of Amy's voice, blinking a couple times rapidly, "I mean, with all these guys going missing, people talk."

"What do they talk about?" All six of us asked simultaneously, which caused Amy and Rachel to look back at the girls.

"It's kind of this local legend." Rachel replied. "This one girl? She got murdered out on Centennial, like decades ago."

I looked at Sam and Adam, who were both watching Rachel attentively, nodding. Lis, Bree and Elena caught my brothers' eyes.

"Well, supposedly she's still out there." She added.

Sam nodded again, absorbing the information. I could tell that's what the rest of the group was doing. If she's out there after decades, killing... does that mean she's a ghost? That seemed like the most plausible road to head down.

"She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up?" Rachel asked, then answered her own question: "Well, they disappear forever."

Amy winced and glanced down at the table, and Rachel quickly put her hand on her arm to comfort her friend. We all looked at each other. Alyssa raised an eyebrow.

"So, we're going to the library?" She asked quietly.

We all nodded in agreement.

I relaxed in my chair, trying to keep the excitement off my face. Now we're getting somewhere. The quicker we solved this case, the quicker we could get back to finding my Dad. That was _fantastic_ news to me.

* * *

 **Location: Jericho Public Library**

* * *

The drive to the Jericho Public Library was short and sweet. After getting directions from Amy, we found it four blocks away from the diner. It wasn't very big, but it had computers, and that's all that mattered to me. We settled in and got to work. Well, Sam and I did. Lis, Bree, Adam and Ellie weren't exactly helping, but it's not like the research portion of all cases needed all six of us to put our brains together.

A web browser was open to the archive search page for the Jericho Herald. The words "Female Murder Hitchhiking" are typed into the search box. I clicked GO; the screen told me there are "(0) Result". After thinking for a second, I replace "Hitchhiking" with "Centennial Highway" with the same response. Sam was sitting next to me, watching. Elena, Bree, Lis, and Adam were sitting behind me (but they were still able to see what was going on and listen to us, join in on the conversation) and a couple books were stacked/opened in front of them. Elena leafed through a couple pages before leaning back in her chair, her middle and pointer fingers gently scratching her temple, and then her forehead. She groaned slightly.

"If we find a motel, the first thing I'm gonna fucking do is shower. This is fucking child abuse, not letting me shower for days at a time, Alyssa." She grumbled. Lis hadn't taken her to the two-star motel room across town to go shower, citing that "gas isn't exactly cheap in this town, suck it up and deal with it for a couple more hours while we go do research". That had pissed Ellie off something awful.

"Little sister, shut it." Lis dismissed with an absentminded wave of her hand.

Ellie growled and then slammed a book shut very loudly, the sound echoing in the silent library. The sound made me jump a bit, but it was mostly because I didn't expect her to do that, not because of the noise. She crossed her arms over her chest, muttering to herself angrily. Adam patted her shoulder sympathetically/empathetically before going back to his book. He's been through that same exact situation with Dad; our Dad would get so focused on a Hunt that nothing else mattered. Sleeping, eating and personal hygiene be damned.

Which is not exactly healthy, but nothing about being a Hunter _screams_ healthy.

"Let me try." My younger brother said before reaching for the mouse.

I smacked Sam's hand away before he could touch it. "I got it." I said, slightly annoyed he wanted to take over after I literally just tired to search for two things.

"Guys." Adam said, and I swear I could _feel_ the eye-roll.

Sam shoved my chair out of the way and hogged the screen. I immediately became annoyed and fed up with his shit. That was the one thing I didn't miss about his four years away from me, from us - how much of a control freak he is.

"Dude!" I protested, then hit Sam in the shoulder - hard. "You're such a control freak."

Sam ignored my bitching. "So angry spirits are born out of violent death, right?" He asked, getting back go the task at hand.

"Yeah." Adam piped up.

"Well, maybe it's not murder." With lightning fast reflexes, Bree - who apparently had been on the same wavelength as Sam - stood up from the chair and moved over to the computer, shoving Sam out of the way now. He scoffed lightly, and I smirked because he got a taste of his own medicine. The blonde replaced "Murder" with "Suicide" and article entitled "Suicide on Centennial" popped up when she hit search. I glanced at Sam and then Bree. She opened the article, and it was dated April 25, 1981. I shifted in my seat, and it was quiet as the three of us read the article.

 _A local woman's drowning death was ruled a suicide, the county Sheriff's Department said earlier today. Constance Welch, 24, of 4636 Breckenridge Road, leapt off Sylvania Bridge, at mile 33 of Centennial Highway, and subsequently drowned last night._

 _Deputy J. Pierce told reporters that, hours before her death, Ms. Welch logged a call with 911 emergency services. In a panicked tone, Ms. Welch described how she found her two young children, 5 and 6, in the bathtub, after leaving them alone for several [minutes]. She reported that their complex-[...]_

 _"'What happened to my children was a terrible accident. And it must have been too much for my wife. Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn't bear it,'" said husband Joseph Welch. "'Now I ask that you all please respect my privacy during this trying time.'"_

 _At the time of the children's death and Ms. Welch's subsequent suicide, Mr. Welch was at the Frontier auto salvage yard, where he works the graveyard shift as associate manager._

 _"'Connie might have been quiet, but she was the sweetest, most caring girl I ever knew,'" said Deanna Kripke, a neighbor. "'She just doted on those children.'"_

"This was 1981. Constance Welch, twenty-four years old, jumps off Sylvania Bridge, drowns in the river." Bree said.

I scrolled down to find a picture of Constance, smiling brightly at the camera. She had pale skin, long straight black hair, and dark eyes.

"Does it say why she did it, Bree?" I asked, not having read that far through the article yet. Like Sam, she's always been a quick reader and pays attention, able to pick out bits of information someone else might miss or gloss over.

Bree said, "Yeah." She paused.

"Well, what is it?" Elena asked when she didn't answer after a couple moments.

"An hour before they found her, she calls 911. Apparently her two little kids are in the bathtub. She leaves them alone for a minute, and when she comes back, they aren't breathing. Both die." I looked back at my friends and brother, noticing that Lis had raised her eyebrows at the information.

She only hummed. "Hm."

The article had a picture of Joseph next to a picture of Sylvania Bridge; I recognized it immediately as the place Troy's car was found.

(And where I was a dick to those legitimate FBI agents.

Ah, good times.)

"'Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn't bear it,' said husband Joseph Welch." Bree read.

"That bridge look familiar to you?" My question was rhetorical, as everyone already knew the answer. Of course it looked familiar to them.

* * *

 **Location: Sylvania Bridge**

* * *

Sam, Adam, Elena, Bree, Lis and I walked along the bridge, then stopped to lean on the railing and looked down at the rushing river. The water was pitch-black; the street lamps above our heads doing little to nothing to help us see through the inky darkness. Black Widow and Baby were parked at the other end of the Sylvania Bridge, and I didn't expect anyone to come barreling down the road to get onto the bridge. The crime scene and police/federal presence might be gone, but that doesn't mean the bridge was magically re-opened.

"So this is where Constance took the swan dive." I said, having to raise my voice ever-so-slightly to be heard over the rushing water.

"So you think Dad would have been here?" Sam asked, looking over at me.

"Well, he's chasing the same story and we're chasing him." I replied.

I continued walking. Sam followed. Bree and Lis were on the other side of the bridge.

"Okay, so now what?" Bree asked.

"Now we keep digging until we find him." I answered. "Might take a while."

Sam stopped. "Dean, I told you, I've gotta get back by Monday—"

I turned around and looked at him. "Monday. Right. The interview." I said.

"Yeah." My brother said.

"Yeah, I forgot. You're really serious about this, aren't you? You think you're just going to become some lawyer? Marry your girl?"

"Maybe. Why not?"

"Does Jessica know the truth about you? I mean, does she know about the things you've done?" I questioned.

"Dean, don't." Ellie warned, trying to reign me in before a fight could break out between the two of us, but I couldn't help it. There have been four - nearly five - years of unresolved tension between us. He ran away on my watch without saying anything, and practically left Alyssa, Aubrey and I to raise Adam and Elena by ourselves. Besides missing him, there had been a shit ton of times when we could have used Sam on Hunts, too. I'm not letting the Adam-and-Elena-had-nightmares-for-years-about-Sam-getting-hurt-while-he-was-living-it-up-in-college go anytime soon.

Sam stepped closer to me, his face hard and serious. "No, and she's not ever going to know."

"Well, that's healthy." I countered, not backing down from him. He had to see the logic in it. Hiding his past from Jessica would only end up hurting both of them - or even killing them - sometime down the line. "You can pretend all you want, Sammy. But sooner or later you're going to have to face up to who you really are."

I turned around and kept walking, making sure to keep an eye on Adam, who's walking a little bit ahead of me. Sam followed.

"And who's that?" He asked.

"You're one of us." I answered simply.

Sam hurried to get in front of me, his expression as cold as ice. "No. I'm not like you. _Any_ of you." He glanced sharply at my friends and Adam. "This is _not_ going to be my life."

Lis spoke up for the first time in a while. "You have a responsibility to—" she tried, but Sam cut her off. She sounded about as frustrated as I felt.

"To Dad? And his crusade? If it weren't for pictures I wouldn't even know what Mom looks like. And what difference would it make?" He demanded, although it wasn't directed at her, it was mainly directed at me. "Even if we do find the thing that killed her, Mom's gone. And she isn't coming back."

Anger pumped through my veins when he spoke about Mom like that. How _dare_ he. He's not going to get away with _that_ \- no fucking way. I didn't think about what I was doing, I just grabbed my arrogant brother by the collar and shoved him up against the railing of the bridge. He grunted slightly as his back collided with the circular screws that had been painted over. That couldn't have been comfortable.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," the girls and Adam chorused, immediately racing over to us, ready to rip us apart in case things escalated to the point where we were going to throw punches at each other. Knowing us, it might go that far.

"Don't talk about her like that." I snapped, ignoring my friends and Adam completely, even as they looked between us, ready to spring into action in case it did get violent.

After a few tense moments, I released Sam from my grip and walked away, my hands clenching into fists. I saw Constance standing at the edge of the bridge. At the same time, so did my best friends and brothers.

"Guys." Elena said urgently, her breath hitching in her throat.

Sam came to stand next to me, his eyes a little bit wide. Constance looked at all six of us, then stepped forward, falling off the edge of the bridge. We all ran to the railing and looked over, only to find nothing - no sign of her body. Not even a scrap of torn white nightgown dress. Yikes.

"Where'd she go?" Adam asked.

Bree shook her head, sharp blue eyes scanning the water. "I don't know."

Behind them, the Impala's engine starts and its headlights come on. Everybody looked at the car, and my eyes widened considerably when I saw that there was no one in the drivers seat. I could feel my blood turn to ice in my veins, even as adrenaline began to flood through my whole body, my body tensing. I prepared myself to run.

Away from my Baby.

 _Oh shit._ Is the only thought that ran through my mind.

"What the fuck?" Lis breathed, not believing her eyes. Her voice was a little shaky.

 _Thank you_ for voicing what we all thought, Lis.

"Who's driving your car, Dean?" Sam demanded.

I pulled the keys out of my pocket and jingles them to get everyone's attention that I, in fact, have the keys, and that there's no way Baby could start on her own like that. Sam glanced at them, and I knew his eyes grew as wide as saucers even though I wasn't looking at him - I could just tell. Elena cursed softly as realization slams over her like a tidal wave. Adam and the twins tensed up instantly. The car jerked into motion, heading straight for us. We turned and ran away from Baby as fast as our legs could carry us. The only thing that popped up into my head, besides a string of profanities, was that Constance would get it - for a second time, mind you - if we outran this ghost bitch possessing my goddamn car.

"Guys! Go! Go!" Sam had to scream over the roaring engine. Like he had to tell us twice. Black Widow's engine, thankfully, was completely silent. It looks like Constance couldn't possess two vehicles at once. We would have been massively screwed if that was the case.

The car began moving faster than the six of us could move; when it got too close, we dove over the railing. I, along with Alyssa, took a swan dive into the rushing, freezing inky-black water below, and I (rightfully) assumed that my brothers, Bree and Ellie hung off the edge of the bridge. I heard the car come to a screeching halt, although it was muffled as I was underwater.

The fourth thought that popped up into my head when I breached the surface, gasping and sputtering for air as mud and slime caked my entire body and got into my mouth (the first, second and third were respectively these, in this exact order: _Fucking hell_ , _Holy shit, that was intense_ , and finally: _Is everyone okay?_ ) was this: _Nobody fucks with Baby. I don't care if they're already dead_.

* * *

 **Elena's POV**

* * *

Bree, Sam, Adam and I had leapt off the bridge and hung on the edge of it. Only Alyssa and Dean took the swan dive into the darkened river. I didn't know how deep it was, or where they were. Shit, what if they got swept away by the rushing current?

"Dean? Dean!" Adam called, his eyes scanning the darkened water for any sign of movement.

"Alyssa?!" I shouted, feeling panic begin to rise in my system when they didn't respond right away. "Where are you guys?"

"Answer us!" Sam added, worry clear in his expression.

A filthy and disgruntled Dean and Alyssa crawled out of the river and onto the muddy rock-bed, panting for breath. Lis spit mud out of her mouth and pushed her filthy, mud-caked hair out of her face.

"Son of a fucking _bitch_." Lis moaned, then began coughing and gasping for air. Dean slapped her back a couple times. It was dark out, but I could tell there was worry clear on his face as Alyssa kept spitting out mud and disgusting river water from her mouth. God, I was so worried they would have gotten swept away by the current or hit their heads on rocks or something.

Adam hopped back over to solid ground and extended his hand, helping his brother and my sister over to safety. He avoided the Impala, though. He was probably worried that it would come to life again. "You three okay?"

"We're fine." Bree and Sam said at the same time, and I hummed my affirmation that I was, in fact, okay. Bree looked over the edge of the railing and at our sister and Dean, who were still laying on the mud, winded and probably in shock.

"The fuck are you asking _them_ if they're okay for?" Alyssa snapped, glaring up at Adam. " _They_ didn't just leap off a bridge into freezing water and got mud everywhere! Dean and I did!" She growled. "Fuck off."

"Yeah, she's good." Bree mumbled, running her hand through her hair.

"Why don't you ask how the hell _we're_ doing?" Dean added, although he didn't sound pissed like Lis did. More perturbed than anything else. I didn't blame him. Having a ghost possess your car and then literally run you off the road would make anyone deeply unsettled.

"Fine, _I'll_ ask, then, dudes." I snapped back at them. "Are you two alright?" I asked, then took Adam's hand when he offered to help me back over the ledge of the bridge.

I was starting to hate this damn bridge.

"Super." They chorused. Lis groaned and then placed her head on her arm, her breathing coming out ragged. Dean kept his hand on her back, probably to comfort her. Adam squeezed my hand comfortingly, and I saw Sam place his hand on Bree's shoulder. Bree, who I noticed, had begun to shake ever so slightly - probably from a combination of adrenaline and shock, having just survived nearly being run over by a ghost-possessed car. I was glad the boys were here to comfort us, because the three of us were more unsettled than they were. We thought we lost two of the most important people in our lives, and Alyssa probably thought she was going to die the second before she slammed into the water.

 _Fuck_.

"Come back up," I called down to them, and they began to make their way back up to us.

"Ellie?" Adam said quietly, and I looked over at him. He squeezed my hand, and I exhaled shakily. "Hey, do you need to sit down? Your legs, um, are practically wobbling..."

I hadn't noticed that I was shaking _that_ badly. I swallowed hard and nodded, and the teen gently guided me to the ground, and we sat together. After a couple moments, he began to pull his hand out of mine, but I quickly (and automatically) laced our fingers together and held tighter onto his hand. I didn't want to let go. He looked a little surprised, but didn't protest as we kept holding hands, providing much-needed physical contact after going through something as traumatic as nearly fucking getting run over.

I know I'm only fifteen so it's illegal, but I feel like I need a goddamn drink of alcohol to help me cope. Jesus Christ.

 _Just another day on the job,_ I thought to myself, watching Dean and Alyssa move towards us, river water and mud dripping from their clothes and leaving a trail with every step they took. In the dim streetlight, I could barely make out that Dean still had his hand on Lis's back. Sam quickly hugged Bree, relieved that his friend was okay. When the eldest Winchester and Drake siblings approached us, no one said anything for a long moment. Dean moved over to the Impala, and Lis dropped down next to Adam and I to check on how we were doing - mentally, if I had to guess.

"Ellie, Adam, you good?" I knew her worried big sister instincts were in full-force.

We nodded. I didn't trust my voice. Lis murmured "okay, thank God" before standing up, moving over to Sam and Bree to check up on them.

After taking a few minutes to check on how the Impala was, Dean shut the hood and leaned against the trunk, vainly trying to wipe mud out of his hair with his equally muddy hand. After taking a couple seconds to look at Adam and I (we were still sitting on the ground), Sam turned his attention to his brother. "Your car alright?"

"Yeah." Dean answered. He looked relived that Baby was alright. "Whatever she did to it, seems all right now." He looked around at the empty bridge. "That Constance chick, what a _bitch_!" He shouted into the night air.

"Do you _really_ want to piss her off _again_ , Dean?" Bree asked. She glanced back at Black Widow, as if expecting her to come to life, just like Baby did a couple minutes ago. Black Widow was silent. Maybe she used up all her energy trying to kill us the first time and couldn't gather any more to kill us with Black Widow. I wasn't exactly sure how to feel about that.

Dean was quiet for a couple moments before saying quietly, "You're right. Probably not the smartest idea ever, Bree."

"Thank God the girls are here to reign your ass in." Adam joked, attempting to break the tension. Dean narrowed his eyes and flipped him the bird. Although, he did look happy to have us here with him.

"Well, she doesn't want us digging around, that's for sure. So where's the job go from here, genius?" Sam directed at Dean, then settled on the hood next to him. Dean threw up his arms in frustration, then flicked mud off his hands. The younger Winchester sniffed him, then looked at Dean, then Lis. Amusement flashed across his face. "You two smell like a toilet."

Bree snickered, and Adam chuckled. I had to bite my lip to prevent from laughing. They really did smell godawful. Dean looked down, his face twisted into a grimace. Lis ran her hand through her hair, probably trying to see how much mud had gotten into her blonde hair. When her sour expression worsened, I knew that it wasn't just a little. It was probably caked into the _roots_ of her hair. I vaguely wondered how many showers she would have to take or how long she would have to take a shower for.

Suddenly my greasy hair from being on the road for days without showering didn't seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Although, if we got to a motel room soon, you bet your ass that I was going to shower ASAP.

"Sam, if you don't shut your cake-hole, I'm going to throw you into the fucking river." She threatened. Sam shut up, knowing that she would do it if he pushed her envelope again. It didn't matter that Sam was taller than she was, Lis would find a way to make good on that threat.

 _Smart boy_. I thought.

Bree cleared her throat. "Come on, guys. We should find a motel and get cleaned up, maybe try to sleep. We all could use it."

I couldn't agree more.

* * *

 **Word count:** **13,487.** **Last updated: 6/17/19.**


	3. The Woman in White & A Tragedy

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize. I only own my OCs, original plots/canon divergences [aka: original writing] (technically? I think? idk please don't sue me), and whatever else you don't recognize.**

 **Enjoy the third chapter of TRLT!**

* * *

 **Chapter Three: The Woman in White & A Tragedy**

 **aka: PILOT (part three)**

 **Date: November 2nd, 2005**

 **Elena's POV**

* * *

Alyssa was sitting at a battered, chipped-red-paint picnic table in front of the motel we had chosen to stay at, trying to clean her face off with a towel soaked in one of - lukewarm, at this point - bottled waters I had bought from The Coffee Spoon; Adam had grabbed the towel from the Pontiac's trunk. Hey, you never know when a towel might come in handy, and what do you know: it's being used right now. Being a Hunter means that you get bloody on the job a lot, so an impromptu cleaning will happen. If not bloody, then dirty. The effort to clean her face was vain, though, because even though she had been scrubbing for almost thirty seconds (yep, I counted), her face still wasn't completely clean. A hot shower might get rid of all the dried mud.

Adam was sitting on the pavement, his back resting against the wheel of the Pontiac. He was lazily twirling the pen he used to write in his notebook, his notebook sitting opened in his lap. Sometimes I wondered what he wrote about - there was a possibility that there was a lot of personal shit written in there, so I could understand why he didn't want us looking. A day after he got it from Dean, Adam made it clear that if we went snooping through it, he'd "stick a gun full of silver bullets up your ass and fire until the clip's empty." So, yeah. Not even Dean decided to poke through it in those three years, even if he had voiced to Bree that he had been curious. Smart move. Lis had told Adam to cut it out when he began clicking it a couple minutes ago, and he did as soon as she told him, probably thinking that pissing Alyssa Drake off while she's already _massively_ pissed was a surefire way to getting kicked in the crotch.

Alyssa was typing away on her phone, which, thankfully, was one of the only possession of hers that wasn't muddy or waterlogged. She had left in the car while we were investigating the bridge last night. Dean's phone wasn't a casualty of the dive into the river, either. He did grab it when he exited the Impala a couple minutes ago to go get a motel room, though.

I was laying width-wise across the Pontiac's hood, my shoes on the pavement and legs crossed and dangling off the edge of the car, a blanket and (pillowcase-less) pillow from the Pontiac both laying below my body. I was staring up at the clouds. One of Adam's jackets was laying underneath the pillow, so the bottom of the pillow wouldn't heat up and become uncomfortably hot because of the sun shining on the metal. As for the blanket being underneath me as opposed to above me, it was too hot to have a blanket over me, even if it was only eight AM. And there was no way I was going to expose my bare and clothed skin to hot, sun-warmed metal. I didn't want to feel like my skin was burning off. It was a beautiful day out, and the perfect temperature. Lis was surprisingly okay with me laying on the hood of the Pontiac - speaking of my big sister, she had ridden with the Winchesters last night. Dean didn't complain once about the backseats and the driver's seat being filthy and smelly, or the fact that the car "smelled like mud, crap and trash", according to Sam. I don't know what Adam thought about it, though. He hasn't really spoken to anyone except since the incident on the bridge.

Dean, Bree and Sam were inside the motel, at motel's reception desk, getting two rooms for us using their credit cards. If I turned my head at the right angle I could see them through the opened window. Bree's name, according to that credit card, was Jeanette Smith. Much like how Adam thought of Dean and his fake name, Phillip, I didn't think my sister could pull off a Jeanette.

After taking a few more minutes to collect ourselves; we would have left immediately in case Constance came back, but I had a small panic attack so we remained there for a bit - Dean drove the Impala and Bree drove the Pontiac far, far away from the Sylvania Bridge. Surprisingly, Lis didn't put up a fight about not sleeping in her car. Although this wouldn't be the first time one of the Drake sisters ended up sleeping in Black Widow or Baby. Adam, who hopped into Black Widow with me and Bree, piled into the car and hauled ass far away from that damned bridge. We ended up in the center of town, Sam, Dean and Lis presumably close by. The six of us weren't as shaken up about almost freaking dying last night as we had been right after it happened, but the shock wore off at around 3 AM. At least, that's when it did for me. I can't exactly speak for the Winchesters and my sisters. If you want my opinion, I don't think Lis caught a wink of sleep.

I think it's safe to say the Impala's windows had been rolled all the way down since the first wisps of morning light made an appearance, as opposed to being cracked so the disgusting smell had some room to escape the cars interior at night.

I wasn't exactly sure how the sleeping arrangements between the four of them worked out last night. Baby only has two rows of seats. Sure, I was curious, but asking Lis about it while she was like... this... definitely wasn't a smart idea. Hell hath no fury like a woman fucking pissed.

I felt a hand tap my ankle, and I knew it was Adam trying to grab my attention. I frowned, not lifting my head up from the pillow to look at the other teen. I watched a couple cumulus clouds roll through the sky, slow and lazy. Grabbing a moment of peace like this didn't happen every day.

"What's up?"

"You wanna take off - without telling anyone?"

I frowned, slightly taken aback by the question. I was also a little confused by it. Alyssa answered before I could. She scoffed.

"What the fuck brought that up, dude?"

"I feel like my skin's crawling. I need to change of scenery and to be around other people besides you five."

"And go where? Besides, Bree and your brothers are coming back soon." It's not that I _didn't_ want to go and do whatever he wanted to do around town with him, I really wanted to, it's just that with everything going on, randomly vanishing didn't seem like the smartest idea in the world.

The pen clicked once, and I heard it scratch against paper in slow and intermittent strokes, as if he was being careful about what he was writing - maybe he was checking it over for any errors. "Is that a no, El?" The nickname made heat race to my cheeks, and I wondered if I could pass it off as the heat getting to me, rather than the fact he called me El. Hopefully it worked.

I didn't want him to think it was a flat-out no. I shook my head, quickly responding to his question. "Nope, it's not, it's a question. And besides, I don't think Dean would like it too much if we left without saying anything." His protective "big brother/best friend" instincts were still in high gear, especially over me, because of the panic attack I had before we left Sylvania Bridge. Bree and Dean were the first to spring into action and calm me down, while Sam and Adam gave me space; the former because, well, I'm sure he didn't want to try and insert himself back into my life while I was literally dealing with a fucking panic attack, and Adam stayed away when Bree told him that "too many people surrounding her might send her deeper into the panic attack instead of _out_ "; that had happened plenty of times before, and Adam knew that, but I guess he was so worried about me that logic flew out the window. It was kind of sweet in a way. Kind of. When Sam suggested to Dean that he go into the motel and pay with another fake credit card of his, the eldest brother glanced at me, his face twisted up in worry. I waved him off, and after looking into my eyes to make sure that I was fine, and didn't actually _need_ to be watched over by him in particular, he disappeared inside, Sam and Bree following.

His lips tugged up into a half-smirk. "We can go later. How's that sound?"

"Sounds awesome." I sat up when I heard Alyssa groan loudly in frustration, throwing the rag on the table and burying her semi-clean face in her semi-clean hands, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes. I wasn't sure that was a good idea.

"It's not working." She whined. "Why the hell isn't it working?"

"Just wait for the hot or cold shower you'll take in literally less than five minutes." I replied calmly. She's as impatient as Dean.

She huffed. "At this rate, if Sam, Dean and Bree don't come back soon, I'm going to sweat out the mud that's dried in my armpits."

"It's been four minutes. At most."

"Yeah, that's way too long. I'm not getting any younger over here." She bitched loudly. I snickered, then sat up when I heard Bree, Sam and Dean's footfalls approaching where we were resting. "Hey," She greeted, tilting her head up, "did you-" she cut herself off when she saw their expressions - each held an eclectic mixture of surprise, disbelief and the slightest bit of excitement. She regarded them, head cocked to the side, tucking her blonde hair behind her ear as she looked at Bree, who cleared her throat. "...Okay, I'll bite." Lis said. "What happened that has you three suddenly this... uh, emotional?"

Before anyone could say anything, Bree threw our own motel room key up in my direction, and I caught it, turning it over in my hand. A barely legible 11 was written in bold black ink, probably sharpie. The thought of "God knows how many people have touched this particular key" bothered the hell out of me. I grimaced and immediately handed the key back to Bree, who didn't seem to care about what I did. Or maybe she hadn't thought about it.

Ugh.

"Burt freaking Aframian happened." Dean said, his lips tugging up into a small grin. His words took a second to sink into my brain, but when they did, my heart skipped a beat.

Holy shit.

John's at this motel.

He's here.

...Potentially.

 _Hey, it's better than thinking he's on the other side of the country. Now we have some idea of where he is rather than no idea._ I reminded myself.

But... he might not even be in Jericho anymore. There's no way it would be that easy, right? That he'd just be in his motel room, doing whatever the hell he's doing? No. God dang. Way. _Nothing_ with John Winchester is ever "easy".

"Holy crap." Lis breathed, and judging by the look on her face, she was still trying to work through how she felt about it.

Adam blinked at the name of one of John's aliases, surprise and, ironically enough: a mixture of conflicting anger-surprise-annoyance evident on his face. His entire face had a plethora of emotions on it, and it was almost like he couldn't decide what emotion to feel. "Out of all the motel rooms in this town and in this state, Dad's at this _particular motel room_ in this town? After all the crap he put us through, the five of us driving an astronomical amount of miles to pick up Sam's ass from rich-boy college, only to find out that Dad's been in a one-stoplight town this entire time, in the same exact place where he's been working a case and we're chasing him, as you said last night, Dean?" It seemed I wasn't the only one who thought this was too easy.

"Jesus, Adam. Take the win." Lis said, clearly taken aback by his little rant.

Adam glanced sharply at all of us. "Does this settle wrong in anyone else's brains besides my own?" Nope. It didn't. "Why the hell wouldn't he just let us know that he was in Jericho, working a case? That would have been better than vanishing."

"Calm down." Dean advised, then shrugged at Adam's question, not one to question how John operated. Sam, on the other hand, did. Regularly. Adam was in the middle of following John's orders and wanting to defy and/or question him and his ways. The perfect mix of his brothers. Passive-aggressive tendencies was more Adam's speed, whereas Sam was more inclined to shout at his Dad. "Coincidences happen, man." He said it like it was the easiest answer in the world. But that's a load of bull, Dean doesn't really believe in them. We rarely believed in them. Or at least, I didn't. "Oh, and he rented out the room for the whole month. We got the room number." He pointed behind him at a red door that had a black 10 in the middle of it. "It's right there."

"What the fuck's up with that damn message about protecting Elena and I?" Adam blurted out.

Everyone stopped, and I could almost hear the collective consensus from my sisters, Sam and Dean that they were also curious about it; what _is_ up with the message, anyway? It's been two days since we heard that message once again, Sammy for the first time, and the three Drake sisters and three Winchester brothers hadn't spoken a word to each other about it, as a group. This case was taking up most of our time; the warning about Adam and I had to wait on the back burners, but that didn't mean we didn't think about it.

Lis stood up from the picnic table and walked over to us. She clapped Dean on the shoulder, who looked at her hand for a moment then back up to her. Her blue eyes glinted in the sunlight, accented by dried mud that was still caked on her normally pale face. "Thank God. We reek. If I saw us walking down the street, covered in filth, I would think we're homeless. I'm just excited that we can finally shower."

Dean laughed, and I saw Lis's smile widen.

I looked at Adam and subtly motioned to my sister and friend with a wave of my hand. He looked at them, then back to me. He smirked knowingly.

"They could shower together." I whispered, hoping it was only loud enough for Adam to hear. He snorted quietly. I wasn't as quiet as I thought I'd be, because Sam and Bree glanced over at me, too. They looked amused by my comment. Dean and Alyssa didn't hear me, and the only reason I knew that was because they would have either joked about it or told us to screw off.

I hopped off the Pontiac, then I slipped my shoes back on before my feet could burn on the hot blacktop. I reached up to adjust my blue-and-orange baseball (Mets) cap, which I traded Bree's beanie for as soon as I got up this morning. Yep. I slept with the beanie on all night. I had bought said Mets cap while we were in my home state: New York. We had been there for business and not pleasure; we were hunting demons. Those black-eyed bastards possessed an entire family and wreaked havoc on their small town. Alarmingly enough, it was the town next to where Lis, Bree and I grew up. There was no way that was a coincidence. Adam, Bree, Lis, Dean and I managed to save all seven of them. And their two dogs. I tucked the pillow and blanket underneath one arm, then grabbed Adam's jacket and offered it to him, who took it with a smile.

Sam spun on his heel and began walking towards the motel. My sisters and Adam trailed behind him, and I followed after I put the blanket and pillow in the backseat of the Pontiac, then fast-walked to catch up with them, falling in line behind Adam. Lis put her hand on Dean's arm, and he playfully put his hand on her shoulder and shoved her away from him.

"Asshole." She said, but she was still smiling. Dean ruffled her mud-caked hair with his hand, and she made an indignant noise.

Once Sam got up to the door, he reached for his jacket pocket and pulled out a small lock-pick, then bent down, beginning to pick the lock. Bree moved over to the door on the left and slotted the key into the lock, making a face at Lis as she walked by her. She made a point of fanning her hand in front of her nose. Sam was still working on getting into the room, while Adam and Dean stood watch, keeping close to Sam.

"How the hell can you stand your own stench?" She asked. "You smell like shit, garbage, mud and... God. You're ripe."

Lis sighed heavily. "Shut your pie-hole, Aubrey." Bree flipped her off. Lis looked at Dean. He was looking at her, amusement clear in his green eyes. "What's up?"

"You know, we _could_ shower together, like Elena suggested." He winked. She whirled around and fixed me a glare, so I put my hands up in an "I surrender, don't kill me" motion.

"I was joking." I wasn't really. This whole "will they won't they" thing they've been having since they were teenagers had been really infuriating. But it was entertaining, too. Adam and I used to do that with Bree and Sam, but then he left and now has a girlfriend, so we haven't done it. It's also because we were too wrapped up in this hunt to do so. Whatever.

"In your dreams, Dean." Alyssa said.

He hummed at her comment, but didn't say anything.

At the same time Sam opened the motel door, Bree opened the motel room door. She stepped inside, and I peeked inside as well. From what I saw, there were two twin beds, a table and chairs in front of the window, and a door, the bathroom I assumed, in the back of the room, off to the left.

"See you in a few." Bree said, and Lis walked into the room, and she grabbed the key from the doorknob then shut the door.

Sam hid the picks and stood up, fixing his shirt, then reached out of the room and grabbed Dean's shoulder, yanking him inside. Adam rolls his eyes, and we enter, too. Sam closed the door behind us. We take look around — every vertical surface had papers pinned to it: maps, newspaper clippings, pictures, notes. There were books on the desk and assorted junk on the floor and bed, including a box with a hazardous-materials symbol that I didn't want to know contained.

"Whoa," Sam said.

Dean turned on a light by the bed and picks up a half-eaten hamburger sitting there. Adam wandered over to the window and drew the shades over the window a little bit more, then looked at a newspaper clipping, scanning the words and photos. Sam steps over a line of salt on the floor, inspecting it. Curious, Dean sniffed the burger and instantly recoiled in disgust. I picked up a flannel that had been laying on the unmade bed, then dropped it. I scowled as I took in the state of the room now that I was standing in the middle of the room.

"This room is a mess." I commented. Leaving his motel room like a tornado blew through it was unlike John because of his marine background.

"I don't think he's been here for a couple days at least." Dean said.

Sam fingered the salt on the floor and glanced at us up. "Salt, cats-eye shells... he was worried. Trying to keep something from coming in."

Dean dropped the burger back onto the table and looked at the papers covering one wall.

"What have you got here?" Adam asked.

"Centennial Highway victims. What about you?"

"News article about a man who went missing way back when. Ricky Parks."

Sam nodded. The victims seen on the wall include Mark Asherton, William Durrell, Scott Nifong, and Corey Hughes who disappeared in 1987 at age 25, and Ricky Parks. Judging by the photos, Mark, Durrell, Nifong, Parks and Hughes were all white males. He crossed the room. I tucked that information away for later.

"I don't get it." Adam said. "I mean, different men, different jobs, ages, ethnicities. There's always a connection, right? What do these guys have in common besides they're all men?"

I shrugged, mystified.

While Adam talked, Sam looked at the papers taped to the other walls, and I looked with him. There's something about the Bell Witch, two people being burned alive, a skeletal person blowing a horn at several scared people with the note "MORTIS DANSE", a column about "Devils + Demons", another about "Sirens, Witches, the possessed", a wooden pentacle, and a note that says "Woman in White" above a printout of the Jericho Herald article on Constance's suicide. Adam turned on another lamp.

"John figured it out." I said.

Dean turned to look, raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean, El?"

The nickname coming from Dean's lips didn't warm me like it did with Adam. I ignored the thought. "He found the same article we did. Constance Welch."

"She's a woman in white." Sam added.

Dean looked at the photos of Constance's victims, then hummed. "You sly dogs." Dean turned back to us. "All right, so if we're dealing with a woman in white, Dad would have found the corpse and destroyed it."

"She might have another weakness." Adam said.

"Well, Dad would want to make sure." Dean made his way over to Sam. "He'd dig her up. Does it say where she's buried?"

"No, not that I can tell. If I were Dad, though, I'd go ask her husband." Sam tapped the picture of Joseph Welch. The caption says he's thirty; the article dates to 1981, so he must be sixty-four. "If he's still alive."

Sam went to look at something else, while I scanned the article for any more details the boys might have disregarded as unimportant aloud. Dean looked at the picture below the Herald article, of a woman in a white dress.

"All right. Why don't you and Adam, uh, see if you can find an address, I'm gonna get cleaned up. We can fill Lis and Bree in later."

"What can I do?" I asked.

"Can you head to the store and buy a couple bags of rock salt?"

Ah, for the guns. I nodded. "Sure."

The practice of putting down an enclosing ring of salt for protection from them came from a lore that said a vampire and demon cannot cross without counting each individual grain of salt, and if they lose count or - if they hold the salt to keep track - accidentally drop the salt (but it burns their skin, so they rarely hold the salt), they have to start again. The impossibility of this task prevents the demon or vampire from crossing the ring, and thus a thicker line is used where the threat is greater. Salt can also stop ghosts and demons from entering a room if a hunter simply spills a line of it in front of all entry points, like windows or doors. According to Christian demonology, demons and the Devil in particular hate salt. Salt is used as a talisman against evil, and sometimes people wear salt capsules around their necks (it's preemptive defensive magic) to dispel enchantment, and is used in a variety of spells both ancient and modern. The popularity of salt, used in essentially everything today, particularly in foods, could be related to the fact that salt is a natural preservative and antiseptic that has long been used a purified agent in folk magic. In some Christian rituals of baptism, especially in Catholicism, salt is put on the lips of the child during the ceremony of baptism as a symbol of wisdom.

Salt may be loaded into a shotgun cartridge and fired at a spirit, forcing it to dissipate harmlessly for a short time. However, this does not destroy the spirit. It can also be poured or spilled into a circle around someone to create an area of protection that keeps spirits from attacking them. A ghost can also be encircled by salt to prevent it from escaping, much like a devil's trap does for demons. If a line of salt is broken by any means, a spirit can pass through it. Salt lines can only be broken by creatures that it does not affect. Salt may also be used to purify human corpses. As it causes intense pain in demons, it may also be used to torture them. It can also be used to force a spirit out of a human's body after possession. It can also be used to force a ghost from a person its possessing.

I snapped out of my thoughts when I heard: "Can you also go buy some other things we're running low on?" I nodded. Dean's footsteps pattered against the ugly carpet, my head automatically turning to look at him. He started to walk into the bathroom. Sam turned towards him.

"Hey, Dean?"

Dean stopped in his tracks and turned around.

"What I said earlier, about Mom and Dad, I'm sorry." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Adam glance at Sam's apologetic face. Judging by his expression, he truly felt bad about it.

Dean held up a hand to stop him from speaking. Adam sat down on the bed, opening up his notebook, flipping to one of the pages. If he kept writing, we would have to get him a new journal pretty soon, like within the next few weeks.

"No chick-flick moments."

Sam laughed and nodded. "All right. Jerk."

"Bitch." Dean responded.

Quick as lightning, Adam added, "Morons." although it was also off-handed because he was preoccupied. I looked over at him to find him grinning down at his notebook.

Sam laughed again as Dean disappeared into the bathroom. The middle Winchester noticed something, his smile disappearing, and crossed the room for a closer look. Curious at the sudden shift in expression, I followed, standing in front of the large, oval mirror. A rosary hung in front of the mirror, and stuck into the mirror frame was a photo of John sitting on the hood of the Impala, next to a ten-year-old boy in a baseball cap, presumably Dean, and with a younger boy, presumably Sam, on the other side of the older man. John's holding a sleeping baby in his arms - Adam. This must've been taken a short time before we were abandoned by our mother. Sam took the photo off the mirror and held it close to him, smiling sadly. He carefully folded it and stuck it in his back pocket. He looked at me when he saw me looking at him.

"You okay?" I asked, my tone gentle. He nodded.

"I'm fine. I haven't seen that picture in years. I'm definitely going to keep it. Maybe tease Adam about his baby fat someday."

Adam scoffed. "Fuck you, man. Dad told me I didn't have an ounce of baby fat on me."

"He was just telling you that to make you feel good about your younger self." Sam teased. Adam stuck his tongue out of him ( _real_ mature, Adam) then flipped him off.

Sam paced, holding his phone, and sat down on the bed. A voicemail message began playing as soon as he clicked a button.

"Hey, it's me," Jess's voice came through the phone, "it's about ten-twenty Saturday night—"

* * *

Dean, clean again, came out of the bathroom and grabbed his jacket, which he had set on the bed. He shrugged it on one shoulder as he crossed the room. "Hey, guys. I'm starving," — Dean and his insatiable appetite — "I'm gonna grab a little something to eat in that diner down the street once my hair dries off. I might go cruising for chicks and having wet hair probably isn't going to help me pull anyone. Elena, the shower's all yours." I grinned when he said that. Yes, I could _finally_ freaking shower! "You three want anything? Since it's nice out, I'm going to walk there. Here," he fished the keys out of his pocket and threw them to Sam, who looked up just in time to catch them and slip them into the pocket of his pants, "take care of my Baby."

Sam shook his head when Dean asked him if he wanted anything. Adam and I thought about it for a few moments, then we shook our heads at the same time. I began flipping through a stack of stapled papers John had left in a drawer he left slightly ajar. Sam nodded when Dean told him to take care of the Impala.

Dean tried to convince us. "Aframian's buying."

Sam shook his head once more, still listening to Jess's voicemail. "Mm-mm." He hummed.

"I'm good, man. Go fill up on enough grease and junk food to fill me up, too, once you're ready." "No thanks." Adam and I said a couple seconds apart.

"You got it, Ad."

"It's Adam, not Ad." Adam grumbled underneath his breath, turning a page in his notebook.

Dean just patted his head and smirked. "Sorry, _Ad_."

Adam groaned and threw his pen at him. He ducked so the projectile wouldn't hit him, and it missed its intended target. It bonked against the window, landing on the table and rolling.

I exchanged glances with Sam and we both rolled our eyes. I took off my Mets hat then threw my hat to Adam, who caught it, inspecting the orange 'M'. Dean picked up Adam's pen, turned it over in his hand, then threw it back to its owner, who caught it, clicking it off. I quickly made a beeline for the bathroom and shut the door behind me. Dean's towel was on the floor. I looked at my reflection in the slightly steamed mirror then took a look at the towel rack. Thankfully, there were two dry towels still hanging up. I could use one for my body _and_ my long hair.

"Did I accidentally step into the Ritz?" I joked to myself, chuckling. Then, I turned on the shower, waited for it to get as warm as it could.

Despite what you might think, I wasn't weird about showering while my three best friends were literally a foot away from the door. The six of us _literally_ grew up with each other. Sure, at first it was weird to shower knowing that icky boys were in the room, but that awkwardness faded. Mostly. It did fade when Lis and Bree were thirteen and I was five; John decided that the three girls in the family should have our own room, while the four Winchesters slept in another room together. Which, thank God, because it was extremely cramped living. Seven in a room was impossible. We alternated who slept on what bed in what crappy motel room. Many nights were spent on the floor or couch (if there was a couch; most of the time it was no dice). Lis, Bree and I slept together most nights when we _did_ get the bed; same goes for Adam, Sam and Dean.

Honestly, it was bad. Borderline child abuse, even. But what could John do? Rent out another room and then let three (then) _clearly_ underage girls sleep in it, without any proper adult supervision? No way. We had a system. It sucked, sure, but it was better than nothing. Or us girls having to sleep on the cold, hard floor _all_ the time.

I pushed the thoughts out of my head and stuck my hand underneath the water, and I immediately knew it wasn't as hot as I would have liked it to be, but there wasn't much I could do about that. I couldn't control the water temperature or the water pressure, for that matter.

Time to have a lackluster shower.

I quickly began to undress. I picked up my clothes and put them in a spot where they wouldn't get wet if water spilled out of the tub, or if the thin shower curtain didn't trap and keep the water _inside_ the tub, where it belonged, then stepped inside, pulling the curtain shut. I gradually relaxed as the lukewarm water hit my body.

I forgot all about my worries in the time I was in the shower.

* * *

I slipped my shirt - the last article of clothing I had to slip on over my body - on. Then I smoothed it down, tugging the hem down over my hips. My hair was tightly wrapped in the second towel, the first (which I had put back up on the rack). My body wasn't completely dry, but I didn't mind. My shower took all of ten minutes. I walked back over to the mirror and wiped the thin layer of steam off the mirror that had gathered during my shower, staring at myself. After a couple minutes of staring at myself in the mirror/standing around, I unlocked the bathroom door and walked out into the room. Adam, Sam and Dean were still lounging around. I frowned, looking at Dean, who was sitting at the small table in front of the window.

"What're you still doing here?" I asked.

Dean shrugged. "I was waiting for you."

"W-Why?"

"Did you change your mind about not wanting anything to eat from the diner?" he grinned, "I mean, you _are_ a growing girl, after all, Ellie." He motioned to Adam. "Like the writer over here." Adam scoffed quietly at the nickname, but didn't say anything. "Besides," he continued, his tone shifting ever-so-slightly for some reason, squinting, "barging into the bathroom while you're showering..." his grin fell and his face twisted up at the implication that he left unsaid, "no freaking thanks. For several reasons." He held up one finger. "One of them legal."

"Dude." Adam, Sam and I said at the same time. I shifted, very uncomfortable at the thought.

"Hey, I'm just saying. I'd _never_ pull that shit." He said, then stood up. "See you three later." Dean said, walking out of the room and shutting the door behind him. I shuddered, humming uncomfortably. I then stood up from the bed and locked the door out of habit.

* * *

 **Dean's POV**

* * *

I got the jacket the rest of the way on as I crossed the parking lot, my footsteps dragging slightly against the pavement. I turned my face up towards the sun, basking in the warmth. I looked over and sees a police car, where the motel clerk was talking to Deputy Jaffe and another deputy. The second deputy has his hands on his hips. The clerk pointed at me, his mouth moving, and I had an idea of what he was saying even though I couldn't hear it.

Well, this is just peachy.

Immediately I turned away and pulled my cell phone out of my pocket, dialing Adam's number, as he was the first contact on my list, and Sam was on his phone. The girls might not pick up, either.

Adam has a tendency to not pick up his phone, which is stupid, given that he's a freaking teenager. Not to mention, _inconvenient_. This was _definitely_ one of the times where I prayed to God he would answer, even if I was within spitting distance of the motel room.

* * *

 **Elena's POV**

* * *

Sam was sitting on the foot of the bed, Adam and I sitting together on the side that faced the locked motel room door. He was still listening to the message. "So come home soon, okay? I love you." I overheard, and then smiled slightly at the warm expression that filtered across Sam's face.

Not for the first time in my life, I wondered what it's like to be that in love with someone, and I wondered if I would love anyone that passionately like I saw Sam hold for Jessica. A romantic love that utterly consumes people and eternally entwines their souls. It sounded nice, but

Suddenly, Adam's phone rang. Adam flipped it open then pressed a button, then put it up to his ear. He put his pen in his pocket after clicking it off, closing his notebook before I could take a peek at it. "What, Dean?" He asked. I frowned. Why would he be calling?

* * *

 **Dean's POV**

* * *

I let out a breath of relief when I heard Adam's voice on the other end of the line, asking me what I wanted even though I _literally_ just saw him and was six steps from the motel room door. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, watching the deputies approach me. Crap. This wasn't good. In fact, this situation was the complete opposite of good. "Dude, five-oh, take off." I warned, then very rapidly and quietly added: "Get the girls if you can, if you can't, just go. Get the hell out of here. Meet up later." All the while, Dad's message ran through my head on a loop.

 _Protect Adam and Ellie with your life, protect Adam and Ellie with your life, protect Adam and Ellie with your life, protect Adam and Ellie with your life, protect Adam and Ellie with your life_.

* * *

 **Elena's POV**

* * *

Adam immediately stood up, motioning for us to head to the bathroom. Sam shut his phone and stood up, cutting off Jess's voice. He shifted into defensive mode as he grabbed my hand, ready to book it out of the only other exit I could knew there was besides the locked door (not that a crappy lock on an equally crappy door would stop a _cop_ from entering): there was a window in the bathroom. I had heard Dean open and close it experimentally before I heard the shower turn on. I kept a tight grip on the stack of stapled papers. I hadn't picked up anything else in the room.

"What about you?" Adam asked.

* * *

 **Dean's POV**

* * *

I swallowed audibly. I didn't care about myself, I was just worried about the rest of the group. "Uh, they kinda spotted me. Go find Dad." I hung up the phone as the deputies got closer to me. I turned and grinned at them, praying like hell Alyssa still isn't in the shower and that one of the older Drake sisters saw me through the window and knew what was happening. Having to escape the room in nothing but a towel wouldn't exactly be fun. Because my brain is a jerk, it conjured up an image of Alyssa wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around her toned body, her hair dripping wet, water droplets sliding down miles of toned, gorgeous skin.

...No, damn it, Dean, this is _not_ the time!

I quickly pushed the sinful thought out of my head and asked: "Problem, officers?" I asked calmly. I quickly glanced at the other officer's name tag. It read Hein.

Jaffe looked at me and frowned. "Where are your partners?"

I frowned, trying to play coy - and keep myself calm. Outwardly, though. Internally, I was screaming inside my own head, panicking, my thoughts racing. "Partners? What, what partners?" _Please, God, Elena and my brothers had already better left the motel room. Please._ I can't let them get screwed over, too. That would be very bad.

Jaffe glanced over his shoulder and jerked his thumb towards the motel room - number 10. Not number 11, thank fucking God. His partner headed over there. I fidgeted, holding my breath.

* * *

 **Elena's POV**

* * *

Adam saw a cop approaching our motel room and darted away from the window, his eyes widening. "Shit. Guys, we gotta book it - now." He didn't have to tell us twice. I couldn't hear the shower in Room 11 running, so that was a good sign. Sam opened the small window and hopped out, barely squeezing through. I looked behind me when I heard the rustling of beads, frowning when I saw Adam slip the rosary over his neck. He followed and got out the window, then they helped me crawl out of the window. I shut it quickly and quietly, praying that there wasn't another cop rounding the back of the motel for this very reason. Not a split second later, I heard the motel room door being kicked open.

 _That was excessive_. I thought, then bolted away from the motel room, already whipping out my phone to warn my sisters about Dean's predicament and the cops if they still had no idea what was going on. I doubted they didn't _not_ know, because a cop just kicked the door open and the walls aren't thick, so they could probably hear us leave out another exit besides the front door, but still. It couldn't hurt to warn them. Adam and Sam kept close to me, their faces etched with worry about Dean.

* * *

 **Dean's POV**

* * *

The other cop walked over to me after doing a sweep of the room for my friend and brothers (and finding no one, thankfully), walked back, giving me the stink eye.

"So. Fake US Marshal. Fake credit cards." Jaffe listed, then demanded: "You got anything that's real?" And, because I'm an idiot who doesn't know when to quit while I'm ahead, I made the executive decision to run my mouth.

"My boobs." I grinned.

Hein moved over to me then pinned my arms behind my back, walking me over to the cop car. I almost made a comment about him roughly manhandling me and to "watch the expensive merchandise", but this time I decided to quit while I was ahead. Apparently having had enough of me, though, he none-too-gently _slammed_ me over the hood of the cop car, and I grunted quietly after my teeth clacked together, front teeth sharply grazing my tongue. The sun-warmed metal touched my exposed skin where my shirt had ridden up. He got his handcuffs out and cuffed me. I winced as the cold metal tightened around my wrists way too tightly. They would undoubtedly leave marks on my wrists.

Motherfucker.

Jaffe's voice was ice cold as he said: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in court. You have the right to talk to a lawyer for advice before we ask you any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer with you during questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish. If you decide to answer questions now without a lawyer present, you have the right to stop answering at any time." Ah yes, the good ole' Miranda warning.

 _Fantastic_. I thought bitterly, but bit my tongue to keep silent. Back-talking the cops when they could use it against me if I had to go to court wasn't a smart idea. I would escape as soon as the pigs left me alone and get back to my family before they could wrangle me into a courtroom, though. I knew I would. I've done it before. A part of me wished I had taken the lock-pick Sam had used on Dad's motel door with me, so I could escape when I deemed it to be safe, but they would probably search me before putting me in a room for questioning. Finding a lock-pick on someone isn't grounds to immediately throw them in jail, but it _does_ raise more questions.

I didn't have time to answer questions from cops who don't know about the what's really out there in the world; monsters and demons who could tear out your kidneys and kill someone you love just to get their rocks off. I'm not scared of cops, but I did feel bad for them _because_ they don't really know about the things that lurk in the shadows. Like, how many more "wild animal attacks" could the cops come up with when in _actuality_ it's a werewolf or vampire or a demon that attacked a civilian?

I was lifted off the hood of the cop car and forced into the cop car. It wasn't exactly gentle, either. I sat in the right seat and got comfortable, casting a very quick glance at room 11 as Jaffe spoke into his radio, probably telling other cops that they were bringing me down to the station.

I clenched my hands into fists and struggled vainly against the handcuffs, letting out a loud huff. Hein and Jaffe opened the passenger and driver's door respectively, getting in. Jaffe put the keys into the ignition and started the car, and we left the parking lot, passing by Baby and Black Widow in the process. I didn't see the girls or my brothers anywhere near the cars. Good. The last thing anyone needed was for Bree to get arrested for using a fake name/credit card to pay for the girls' motel room, and for impersonating a US Marshall - along with Elena and Sam on the Sylvania Bridge. Since Elena's a minor, I had no idea what the hell would happen to her, where she would go if she got arrested. Juvenile detention center, maybe? But since impersonating an agent of the law is a federal crime... God, what if she went to _Federal Prison_? If Sam, Bree, and Ellie were caught, they'd get fined and/or thrown into Federal Prison for three years - or more. I know that information because Dad had drilled it into my head - as a warning. The "don't get caught or screw up or [insert bad thing we're trying to _avoid_ ] will happen" kind. And I hadn't gotten caught or screwed up - none of us had.

Until now.

I screwed up badly.

Deputy Asshole/Hein kept looking at me suspiciously and I swear to God, if I wasn't in these cuffs, I would have bitch-slapped him.

The car rumbled down the road. I exhaled slowly, absentmindedly flexing my fingers.

I hoped everyone was safe. I also hoped Elena wouldn't have a panic attack worrying about me or worrying about getting caught by the fuzz. I was incredibly worried about Deputy Bastard/Jaffe circling back to the motel to look for my "partners" once he dropped me off. I knew in the back of my mind that it would happen.

That caused a ball of dread to form in my stomach. Why did I let Elena, a _minor_ , go to Sylvania Bridge and impersonate a Federal agent? I'm not blaming Lis or Bree for letting her go do her job, I'm blaming _myself_ for not stopping her. I'm the oldest one out of all of us, I should've realized how suspicious it would have been if a girl who looked to be in her late teens (and she was) said she was a Marshall. But I was so focused on the case and it was a force of habit to just let Elena impersonate whatever the hunt called for that I just kind of... forgot about it. Actually forget is a strong word. "Habitually went along with it" seems more accurate. She may be on the younger side and in any other universe, if she wasn't as jaded as she had been, there's no way she would have been convincing as a marshal (or by sheer luck, she _did_ pass as a Marshal _because_ she's as jaded as she was; after growing up in the life, I could see how jaded everyone in our group is), but as she said on the bridge: _"Trust me, Deputy Jaffe. With the amount of head-spinning stuff we've seen in our days as marshals, it's made us extremely wise beyond our years."_ She's absolutely right saying that she's a lot older mentally than she is physically - quite literally wise beyond her fifteen years on Earth, all because of what she's seen and done as a hunter - but I should've spoken up, done _something_ other than be complacent and not think about the potential consequences of having Elena do that. Not even for a second.

Case and point: I'm an idiot.

Case and _another_ point: Elena would be too stubborn to stop pretending if it furthered the case. Charming a lot younger authoritative figures is kind of her shtick and comes in handy a lot. So that was an issue.

A thought suddenly tidal-waved over me. How the hell would I be able to keep Elena safe if I continued let her do all of this crap without thinking twice about it, especially considering the fact that she's still a _teenager_? Adam, too?

 _Sorry, Dad. I'll do better_. I thought.

...No, you know what? I won't just do better. "Doing better" wasn't good enough. These three girls I've known for basically my whole life are my family. Aubrey and Elena Drake are like the sisters I never expected to have, but I'm grateful they did. (…Alyssa's a different case. More on that later; I was _kinda_ handcuffed and on my way to a police station to be questioned). I wouldn't give up on them or abandon them like Lauren did to her three girls. Much like Sam and Adam, Elena didn't grow up with her parents. If it wasn't for pictures Lis and Dad had saved, they would barely remember what their Mom and especially their Dad looked like.

Right then and there, in the back of that cop car on the way to the station with Deputy Asshole and Deputy Bastard, I promised to myself I'll _be_ better. Not just for my own sake, but for the sakes of Sam, Bree, Dad, Adam, Elena, and Alyssa. For the ones I love.

* * *

I was brought into the station, bypassing a lot of cops who looked at me weirdly. They probably thought I was some lowlife - a high school dropout with six bucks to his name _ **(*)**_. Jaffe led me into the interrogation room.

"Sit." He ordered, and I did as I was told. Once I sat down, he looked me over critically, scoffed, then left the room, closing the door loudly.

A Sheriff with the last name of Pierce entered the room, carrying an evidence box filled with items the cops collected from Dad's motel room. A _very_ quick look confirms that they didn't touch something Elena or Adam did, so there's no way they could run fingerprints on them. The thought brings me slight comfort. He set the box on the table at which I sat and went around the table to face me across it.

"So you want to give us your real name?" He asked.

"I told you, it's Nugent. Ted Nugent." Ted Nugent is a singer/guitarist.

Apparently he didn't like that I was lying to him. "I'm not sure you realize just how much trouble you're in here." He said coldly.

I leaned forward in my chair, my face unreadable. "We talkin', like, misdemeanor kind of trouble or, uh, 'squeal like a pig' trouble?"

"You got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall." He countered. Seems like the needle is pointing towards the 'squeal like a pig' end of the trouble spectrum. Great.

I looked away, my mind racing with ways I could escape these stupid cuffs and get back to my family.

"Along with a whole lot of Satanic mumbo-jumbo. Boy, you are officially a suspect." He told me. I looked over at him, letting a little annoyance flash across my face.

"That makes sense. Because when the first one went missing in '82 I was three."

"I know you've got partners. One of 'em's an older guy. Maybe he started the whole thing." Oh, you have no idea, dude. "So tell me. Dean." I struggled to keep the surprise off my face when he said my name, and shifted slightly in my seat when the Sheriff tossed a _very_ familiar brown leather-covered journal on the table, which landed with a heavy thunk. "This his?" Yes. The fact that its here while he isn't can only mean one thing. That Dad _isn't_ in Jericho anymore. Crap.

I stared at it, my heart skipping a beat. The Sheriff sat down on the edge of the table, flipping through the journal: it's filled with newspaper clippings, notes, and pictures, just like what's on the walls of Dad's motel room. His familiar handwriting seems to tempt me and comfort me at the same time.

"I thought that might be your name. See, I leafed through this. What little I could make out— I mean, it's nine kinds of crazy."

I leaned forward for a closer look, trying to snag what bits of information I could from it. Dad never let any of us flip through it.

"But I found these interesting pages, too."

He opens the journal to a page that reads "Dean 35-111", circled, with nothing else on that page. I understood what that meant immediately - coordinates. He flipped the next page, and circled in the middle of the page, the words 'KEEP THEM SAFE' are bolded, circled and underlined with three lines.

 _Point_ _understood, Dad_. I thought.

"Now. You're stayin' right here till you tell me exactly what the hell these two things mean, and who 'they' are."

I stared down at down at the page, then looked up.

 _Keep them safe_.

It's a no-brainer that I would; I will always keep them safe - not talking about them to Sheriff Douchebag means that I would, in fact, be doing my job. And I don't intend to fail. He can grill me all he wants for as long as he wants, for _days_ even, but I won't utter a damn word.

* * *

 **Adam's POV**

* * *

Elena, Sam and I reconvened with Alyssa and Aubrey behind the motel, away from any doors or windows, because God forbid that old motel clerk who screwed us over recognized Sam or Bree, seeing as they were with Dean while he booked the motel room for us. Having two more people get their asses _dragged_ down to the station like Dean's wouldn't be the best thing. Especially since they used fake credit cards and they - including Elena - impersonated a federal marshal _ **(*)**_. Alyssa's long hair was still damp from her shower, but she cleaned up well. Bonus points: she was not as snappy or visibly annoyed as she had been before she showered. It was nice to know she wouldn't tear off our heads without warning anymore.

"What about Dean?" Lis asked.

Sam said, "He'll be fine."

"He's like a cockroach. He'll come back. He always does." I added, humor lacing my tone. Elena's lips upturned into a small smirk.

"True."

Bree glanced around our surroundings nervously, probably for any more signs of cops. "So what did Dean say we had to do?"

"Elena has to go buy rock salt and some other things we're running low on, right?" I asked, thinking over the list in my head, which I had made two days ago. The list that was currently sitting in the Impala. When she hummed to confirm, I added, "Oh, and probably some pie would be nice, because Dean's going to be annoyed when he gets out. And he just needs food because he said he was, and I quote, starving. Sam and I are going to go talk to Joseph Welch. If Dean somehow isn't back by the time we're done with our errands, we're going to go after Constance without him."

"Okay." The girls chorused. Before Bree could turn around, Sam placed his large hand on her shoulder. She looked at his hand, then up at him, an eyebrow arching.

"You have a target on your back, Bree. Please be careful." Then, to Elena and Lis: "You two as well." He squeezed her shoulder gently, and a small smile flashed across Bree's face.

She put her hand on top of his. "I always am."

* * *

 **Dean's POV**

* * *

I rolled my eyes for what must have been the fourth time in six minutes since the Sheriff Douchebag began prodding me about the "Dean 35-111". He hadn't mentioned the obviously extremely important "KEEP THEM SAFE" note yet, but I had a feeling he would soon, when he finally realized that I wouldn't give him an honest answer about the Dean 35-111. "I don't know how many times I gotta tell you. It's my high school locker combo."

"We gonna do this all night long?" He crossed his arms over his chest, then said: "Who are 'they', Dean?"

And there it is. I just kept staring at him, quiet as a mouse. If Adam was here, he'd say that this is the longest time I've shut up for.

Suddenly, the door opened and Deputy leaned into the room.

"We just got a 911, shots fired over at Whiteford Road." He announced. No idea what road that is.

He looked at me. "You have to go to the bathroom?"

"No."

"Good."

I knew what that meant. The Sheriff quickly handcuffed Dean to the table and left with the Deputy. I glanced at the journal and saw a paper clip poking out of it, pulled it out, and looked at it. Moments later, as the Sheriff and Deputy are gearing up to leave, I'm out of the cuffs. I leave through the window in the door, then ducked out of sight as the the Deputy approached the door, and waited for the right moment.

* * *

The right moment came eventually. I grabbed Dad's journal and escaped the station via the fire escape.

* * *

 **Adam's POV**

* * *

Sam and I were standing in front of the chain-link covering a grimy glass window. I knocked on the door the window is in. An old man opened it: it's Joseph Welch.

"Hi." Sam greeted. "Are you Joseph Welch?"

"Yeah."

"Do you mind if we ask you something?"

He shook his head.

"Great. Do you know this man?" Sam asked, pulling out the photo he grabbed from the motel.

Myself, Sam and Joseph are walking down the junk-filled driveway, Joseph inspecting the photo. "Yeah, he was older, but that's him." Joseph hands the photo back to Sam. "He came by three or four days ago. Said he was a reporter."

"That's right." I said. "We're working on a story together."

"Well, I don't know what the hell kinda story you're working on. The questions he asked me?"

"About your wife Constance?" Sam asked.

"He asked me where she was buried."

Yep. Sounds like Dad, alright. Straight to the point.

"And where is that again?" I wondered aloud.

"What, I gotta go through this twice?" He asked, and he sounded tired. Jaded. I couldn't blame him though.

"It's fact-checking." I responded calmly. "If you don't mind."

"In a plot. Behind my old place over on Breckenridge." I tucked that vital piece of information away for later, writing it down in my notebook I had brought with me. I love that thing.

"And why did you move?"

"I'm not gonna live in the house where my children died."

Sam stopped walking, placing a hand on my shoulder and gauging my reaction. I shrugged; the man had a point. When my mother died, she died in my house, and I knew that if I was much older and knew everything I did now about the supernatural world, I would have wanted to move out of there as soon as possible. Even now, every time I thought about my mother's death. Luckily, I did move out. In fact, I moved out _very_ quickly because of Dad. He, Sam and Dean took me in, even if I don't remember it. They raised me. Joseph stopped too.

"Mr. Welch, did you ever marry again?" I asked.

"No way. Constance, she was the love of my life. Prettiest woman I ever known."

"So you had a happy marriage?"

He hesitated. I looked at Sam, who brushed some of his hair behind his ear. I nearly smirked. That was his code for "I know that person is lying." I hadn't thought I would see that ever again. It sent a spark of joy and hope through my body.

"Definitely."

"Well, that should do it." I said. Thanks for your time."

Sam and I turned toward the Impala. Joseph walks away. Sam waited a moment, then looks back up at Joseph. "Mr. Welch, did you ever hear of a woman in white?"

He turned around, confusion on his face. "A what?"

"A woman in white." I clarified. "Or sometimes weeping woman?"

The man just stared at the two of us like we're crazy.

"It's a ghost story. Well, it's more of a phenomenon, really." Sam started back toward Joseph. "Um, they're spirits. They've been sighted for hundreds of years, dozens of places, in Hawaii, Mexico, lately in Arizona, Indiana. All these are different women." He stopped in front of Welch.

"You understand." I added, unable to help myself. "But all share the same story."

"Boys, I don't care much for nonsense."

Joseph walks away. Sam followed, and I did, too.

"See, when they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them." I continued.

Joseph stopped dead in his tracks.

Sam jumped in, his tone hard. "And these women, basically suffering from temporary insanity, murdered their children."

That got his attention. He straightened his shoulders and turned around.

"Then once they realized what they had done, they took their own lives. So now their spirits are cursed, walking back roads, waterways. And if they find an unfaithful man, they kill him. And that man is never seen again."

"You think..." he paused, taking a deep breath, "you think that has something to do with... Constance? You smartasses!" He spat.

Sam clenched his jaw, face set in steely determination to get to the truth. "You tell us."

"I mean, maybe... maybe I made some mistakes. But no matter what I did, Constance, she never would have killed her own children. Now, you get the hell out of here! And you don't come back!" He shouted.

Joseph's face shook, whether from anger or grief, it was impossible to tell. After a long moment, he turned away, walking away from us after a few seconds. Sam sighed, looking at me.

"Hey, at least Lis, Bree and Elena will have more luck with the materials and food." I said. Sam chuckled, ruffling my hair.

"Yeah, you're right. Come on, let's go to the old Welch house and do what we do best. We should inform the Drakes about the house, too, have them meet us there."

 _Do what we do best_.

"Damn straight, Sam." I said, and we got into the Impala, driving off and away from the Welch property, the gears in my mind turning as I began to think about the information I had gathered about the case.

* * *

Sam had been driving the Impala, myself in the passenger's seat, absentmindedly fiddling with the rosary around my neck. He reached for his phone when the tune signaling he had an incoming call sounded. He pulled it out and answered it, putting it in between us so I could hear, too. We had called the girls and gave them the 411 on what happened, and they were heading to the old house. They had gotten everything on the lists: snacks and supplies to take down monsters. I was mainly excited about the snacks.

"Fake 911 phone call?" Dean's voice rang out, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Dean was okay. "Sammy, I don't know, that's pretty illegal."

I grinned, and so did Sam. "You're welcome, Dean."

"Listen, guys, we gotta talk."

"Tell me about it." I said. "So the husband was unfaithful. We are dealing with a woman in white. And she's buried behind her old house, so that should have been Dad's next stop. Lis, Bree and Ellie are on their way to the house right now. We caught up them up to speed. They headed back to the motel, probably to gear up in privacy rather than in a parking lot."

Sam added, "They also got what you requested."

"Sammy, Addy, would you shut up for a second?" Dean tried.

"I just can't figure out why Dad hasn't destroyed the corpse yet." Sam said, his mind in full hunter mode now.

"Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you. He's gone. Dad left Jericho." I blinked, struggling to fight down the disappointment, but at the same time I wasn't shocked.

Sam, though, apparently, was skeptical. "What? How do you know?"

"I've got his journal."

"Holy crap." I muttered.

I knew that was a red flag in Sam's mind. A major one. I could see it in his eyes. I knew it because it was it was a major red flag in my own brain. "He doesn't go anywhere without that thing." He breathed.

"Yeah, well, he did this time."

"What's it say?" He asked.

"Ah, the same old ex-Marine crap, when he wants to let us know where he's going."

"Coordinates." I said aloud, and Sam hummed quietly. "Where to?"

"I'm not sure yet, guys." He paused. "And there was another thing. The same message about Adam and Elena. 'Keep them safe.'"

Again?

"I don't understand." Sam said. "I mean, what could be so important that Dad would just skip out in the middle of a job and tell you, specifically in his journal, to relay what you already know? Dean, what the hell is going on?"

I didn't understand it either. It scared me a little bit, to be honest.

Sam looked up and suddenly slammed the brake. Constance had appeared on the road in front of us. He dropped the phone to hold the steering wheel with both hands, the phone clattering into the cup holder a second later. The noise couldn't have been too pleasant to our brother's ears. My heart skipped a beat. The car went right through her as Sam brought the car to a halt, eyes wide.

"H-holy fucking _shit_." I muttered, my heart pounding.

"Sam? Adam? Sam! Adam!" Dean called our names, pure panic laced in his voice.

Inside the car, Sam breathed hard and I swallowed, trying to keep my nerves under control, but the ghost bitch gave me quite the jump-scare. Constance suddenly popped up in the back seat.

"Awesome." I breathed.

"Take me home." Constance whispered, eyeing both of us with cold, lifeless eyes. Her voice was heavily distorted. "Take me home!" She demanded when we didn't answer right away, much louder this time.

"No." Sam said firmly, glaring at the woman.

"Eat horse shit, lady." I grumbled. I immediately realized the fact that I sounded like Dean.

Constance didn't like the fact that we refused to do as she demanded - and I'll take a shot in the dark, here: the insult. She glared at us and the doors lock themselves. Sam and I struggled to reopen them. The gas pedal pressed down, and the car began to drive itself, moving slowly down the road. Sam tried to steer, but Constance was doing that too, and her powers were stronger than his will. Sam continued to try to get the door opened, and I picked up Sam's phone and shoved it into my pocket so Dean could still hear what was going on. In the back seat, Constance flickered.

The car pulled up in front of Constance's house and stopped. The house, from years of neglect and exposure to the elements, was a shell of its former self. The engine shut off and so did the lights.

"Don't do this." Sam said. I exchanged a nervous glance with my brother. Were we about to get fucked up by a ghost?

Constance flickered. Her voice was sad as she said: "I can never go home."

"You're scared to go home." I realized.

Sam and I looked back and Constance wasn't there. We glance around and backwards, and I felt an invisible force knock my head against the window twice in very quick succession, dazing me. Right after, I felt that same force throw me out of the door. Before Sam could react, Constance She climbs into his lap, shoving him back against the seat hard enough to recline the seat. Sam struggled weakly. I groaned, burying my head into my arm, trying not to pass out. That ghost bitch hits _hard._

"Hold me." I could barely make out Constance's words. "I'm so cold."

"You can't kill me." Sam snapped. "I'm not unfaithful. I've never been!"

"You will be. Just hold me." She breathed. For some bizarre reason, I didn't think about the fact that the implication that Constance would try to kiss him and therefore he would technically be cheating on Jessica, his current girlfriend.

I thought about Aubrey Meredith Drake.

Through blurry vision, I could barely see that Constance began to kiss Sam as he continued to struggle against her, and I could barely hear his fingertips brush against the keys as he reached for the keys, probably trying to start the car. I groaned again, slowly opening my eyes to watch, struggling to get up. I felt useless - and a little sick to my stomach for multiple reasons. She pulled back and disappeared, a flash of something horribly inhuman behind her face as she vanishes. Sam looked around for a moment, his eyes landing on me, his mouth open to presumably call my name. He yelled in pain and yanked his hoodie open. I struggled to sit up, but once I did, I saw that there were five new holes burned through the fabric, matching to Constance's fingers: she flickered in front of him, her hand reaching into his chest, probably trying to tear out his heart. A gunshot went off, shattering the window and startling Constance. And me as well, but I digress.

Bree approached the car, still firing at the bitch. I could barely see my friend, but I knew she looked like a badass warrior princess shooting those rounds at Constance. "Stay the fuck away from Sam!" She yelled. Constance glared at her and vanished, then reappears, and she keeps firing until she disappears again. I heard two pairs of footsteps quickly move around the Impala, and I blinked back dark spots. I saw Alyssa and Elena, guns drawn. Elena gasped when she saw my less-than-okay condition. I looked around for Black Widow, finding the Pontiac parked a few feet away from the Impala.

"Adam!" "Christ, kid, you're bleeding." Elena and Alyssa said. Lis bent down next to me and quickly helped me stand up, away from the Impala.

Oh. I'm bleeding? Slowly, I put my hand to the back of my head, felt something wet, and pulled my hand away, grimacing when I saw that my hand was in fact, stained with my blood. I hadn't noticed. I felt Lis's hand press against the back of my head, where the injury had been. I winced when I felt blood run down my neck, staining my shirt. Lis took my hand in hers and laced our fingers together. She gave my hand a quick squeeze. Her blue eyes were lit up with concern - and anger, probably at Constance for hurting her best friends. After a couple long moments of struggling, Sam managed to sit up and start the car, the engine roaring.

"I'm taking you home." Sam snarled to Constance.

Sam drove forward. Dean, Lis, Bree, Elena and I stared after the car in pure horror. Sam smashed through the side of the house, tearing a hole in the already dilapidated structure. Old wood fell from the point of entry, glass crunching loudly underneath the wheels. Dean hurried through the wreckage to the passenger side of the car, Bree close behind. Lis and Elena helped me up and we followed after them as quickly as we could. I grimaced, wrapping my arms around the sisters' waists tightly to help keep me upright.

"Sam! Sam!" Dean called, panicked. I tense slightly. "You okay?"

I exhaled shakily when I heard Sam groan. "I think..."

"Can you move?" Elena asked.

"Yeah. Help me?"

Dean leaned through the window and gave Sam a hand, Bree standing nearby, her gun still drawn. She turns towards Constance when she flickers back into existence. She picked up a large framed photograph seen when she brought the last victim, Troy, here: the woman is clearly Constance and the children are presumably hers.

Dean helped Sam out of the car, making their way behind Bree, who was stone-faced. I groaned slightly. I felt sick to my stomach for two reasons. Great.

"There you go." Dean mumbled to Sam.

Dean closed the car door. We look around and see Constance; she looked up. She glared at us and then threw the picture down, where the remaining glass from the picture frame broke. A bureau scooted towards Bree, Sam and Dean, pinning them against the car. She looked at Lis, Elena and I and made a fist, and the telekinetic force pinned us in our spots on the floor. Elena struggled in vain, and Lis grunted out: "What a bitch." Suddenly, Constance locked eyes with Elena and stared her down. I couldn't see Elena's expression, but I felt her stiffen even against the invisible hold. I could almost _see_ the curiosity on Bree, Sam and Dean's faces as to why Constance suddenly took an interest in looking at Elena. The two had never knew each other when she was alive; there was no way. So what was the reason? The little staring contest seemed to go on forever (or maybe that was my head injury distorting time for me - I couldn't be sure), and it was only broken when the lights began to flicker overhead; Constance looks around, scared. Water begins to pour down the staircase. She goes over. At the top were the boy and girl from the photograph she had been holding. They held hands and spoke in unison.

"You've come home to us, Mommy."

" _Freaking creepy little kids_." I mouthed to myself.

"I just got a flashback to _The Shining_." Lis mumbled. We ignored her, watching the scene in front of us unfold.

Constance looked at them, distraught. Suddenly they were behind her; they embraced her tightly and she screamed, her image flickering and distorting heavily. In a surge of energy, still screaming, Constance and the two children melted into a puddle in the floor. Sam, Bree and Dean shoved the bureau over and went over to look at the spot where Constance and her children vanished.

"So this is where she drowned her kids." Bree said.

We all nodded.

"That's why she could never go home. She was too scared to face them." I said, then groaned slightly, feeling my world tilt at an alarming angle. Questions concerning Elena - once again, I swear that girl hasn't left my mind in a while - began to swirl in my screwed-up head. Why did she look at Elena Drake like tha Did Elena know why? This might be a far-fetched stretch, but did it concern Dad's message?

Why, why, why? Seemed to be the biggest questions we had been asking since Dad had mysteriously vanished - from Jericho, no less. All we have are questions and no freaking answers. Nada, zilch, fucking zip. It was frustrating to no end, to say the least.

I moaned loudly as my head pounded, brain screaming in protest. The questions making my brain spin definitely didn't help with the fact I had a head injury. I don't think she gave me a concussion, but I didn't want to risk thinking about anything right now.

"You found her weak spot." "Nice work, Sammy." Lis and Dean said.

My brother slapped Sam on the chest where he had been injured and walked away. Sam laughed through the pain. I tilted on my own feet, struggling not to collapse.

"Yeah, I wish I could say the same for you." He looked at Bree. "What were you thinking shooting Casper in the face, you freak?"

"Hey. Saved your ass. Thank God El bought that rock salt."

"You're welcome." Elena said. He smiled at her, and she smiled right back at him. She should smile more. She looked pretty and much more innocent. Almost like a normal fifteen-year-old.

Dean leaned over to look at the car. Bree cocked her gun, putting it in the waistband of her pants - in the back, though, obviously. She covered the gun with her shirt. "I'll tell you another thing. If you screwed up my car?" He twisted around to look at Sam. "I'll kill you." He threatened.

Sam laughed, making his way over to Lis, Elena and I. Elena and Sam shared a look, and I knew he was wondering the same thing we were: why did Constance look at Elena like that?

Sam carefully inspected my head injury, his face full of worry and guilt. "Adam, I'm sorry for letting that happen."

I shrugged. "It's cool, man. Just another day in the life of Adam Milligan-Winchester." I looked at Dean, who made his way over to us, Bree a couple steps behind him. "Hey, guys... uh, can we get the hell out of here?" This place was giving me the creeps.

Everyone nodded.

"Yeah. Let's blow this popsicle stand." Dean said.

* * *

The Impala tore down the road; the right headlight had been taken out when Sam had ran through the Welch home. Dean hadn't been too happy about that.

Sam had the journal open to "Dean 35-111" and a map open on his lap. He had been searching the coordinates with a ruler, a flashlight tucked between his chin and shoulder. He hadn't flipped it to the handwritten message addressed to Dean about Elena and I, but I knew he was tempted to pour over that vague message. "Okay, here's where Dad went. It's called Blackwater Ridge, Colorado."

Dean nodded. I shifted in my seat a bit. I was feeling a lot better than I had been at the house; I popped two Advil's and drank some water. The pills were working. My splitting headache had been reduced to a dull intermittent pounding in my skull. "Sounds charming. How far?"

"About six hundred miles."

"Hey, if we shag ass we could make it by morning. Adam, when you're up to it, call one of the girls and let them know of the plan."

"Sure thing, dude." I said, already reaching into my pocket to make a quick call to Alyssa.

Sam looked at Dean then back at me, hesitating. "Dean, Adam, I, um..."

Dean glanced at the road and back.

I stared at him, forgetting all about the phone call. "You're not going."

"The interview's in like, ten hours. I gotta be there."

Dean nodded, disappointed, and returned his attention to the road. I sighed softly. "Yeah. Yeah, whatever." He said, then looked at Sam. "I'll take you home. Make sure you say "bye" to the girls in a text before you get back to lawyering up, though."

Sam put the map away and turned the flashlight off. We drove on into the night, heading back to Stanford.

* * *

We pull up in front of the apartment, Dean still frowning, and I could feel myself becoming upset. Sam got out and leaned over to look through the window. I rolled down the side window so I could hear him better and didn't have to strain my ears too much.

"Call me if you find him?" Sam asked.

Dean nodded. "Yeah."

Sam looked at me, then said: "Or if you find out anything - _and I mean anything_ \- out about Dad's message about Adam and Elena. Even if you think it's pointless information."

"Of course, little brother."

"And maybe I can meet up with you two and the girls later, huh?"

I perked up when he said that. "Yeah, all right." I said, trying to ignore the spark of hope that fluttered through my body.

Sam patted the car door twice and turned away. Dean leaned toward the passenger door, one arm going over the back of the seat.

"Sam?"

He turned back.

"You know, the six of us made a hell of a team back there."

"Just like old times." I added. Please get back in the damn car, Sam. _Please_.

"Yeah. Tell the girls I said they kicked some serious ass on this case." But he didn't move towards us. Dean looked at me. We both knew he wouldn't get in.

This was the last time we were going to see him again, at least for a while.

The thought crushed me more than I would ever admit to anyone aloud.

Dean rolled up the passenger side's window and drove away from the apartment building. I could feel Sam watch us go, and I swear I heard him sigh. I turned around to take one last look at my brother before we wouldn't see him for a long time.

He didn't look back, but I watched his figure until we turned a corner and I couldn't see him anymore. Tears welled up in my eyes, but I blinked them back, determined not to cry in front of Dean, who might stop the Impala to check up on me. We'd lose valuable time in heading to Blackwater.

So, I fell apart silently, my phone call to the girls all but forgotten at this point.

* * *

 **Sam's POV**

* * *

I let myself into my apartment. Everything was dark and quiet. It was peaceful. After the night I had with the Woman in White, I craved peace. Normality. I wanted to lay next to Jess and hold her close, kiss her.

That small amount of peace I felt wouldn't last. Peace _never_ lasts. Not with the Drakes or Winchesters. We're cursed.

"Jess?" I called, then closed the door. "You home?"

I noticed a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the table, with a note that reads "Missed you! Love you!", next to a National Geographic. I picked one up and chowed down on it as I snuck into the bedroom, smiling. The shower was audibly running. I sat down on our bed, shut my eyes, and flopped onto my back.

Suddenly, blood dripped onto my forehead, one drop, then another; I flinched and opened my eyes. The sight above me makes me gasp in horror: Jess was pinned to the ceiling, staring down at me and bleeding from her belly. Her white nightgown was stained red. Her eyes were wide and unseeing, her mouth opened in horror.

It... It was like Mom all over again.

"No!" I screamed, tears springing into my eyes as horror overtook my entire body. Jess's body burst into flames; the fire spreading quickly across the ceiling. My heart pounded as I felt the heat of the fire immediately slap me across the face. I was too stunned to move, to breathe, to think rationally, let alone about getting out of the room. Greif and horror consumed my entire body.

I barely heard someone kick the front door open through the roar of the flames.

"Sam!" I heard Dean scream desperately.

I raised one arm to shield my face from the heat, panicking and grieving and horrified all at once as my entire life fell apart all around me. "Jess!" I screamed hopelessly, as if that would somehow resurrect her, bring her back to me.

Dean came running into the bedroom. "Sam! Sam!" I could tell that Dean looked up and saw Jess. "Fuck." I just barely heard him say underneath his breath.

"No! No!" I screamed.

Dean grabbed me off the bed, which hadn't caught on fire yet, and bodily shoved me out the door, and I struggled all the way. "Jess! Jess! No!" I watched in something much worse than terror or heartbreak as the bottom of my dresser burst into flames. The dresser where I had hidden the engagement ring.

The engagement ring.

 _The engagement ring_.

With more strength than necessary, I shoved Dean out of the way and dashed into my burning bedroom, barely having the time to open my drawer and push my clothes out of the way, grabbing the little black box that held the engagement ring. The ring that was for Jessica Moore.

The _engagement ring_ I would never get to give-

 _Oh God. Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God._

I kept a very tight grip on the box, and thank goodness I did, because I felt Dean's hand on the back of my jacket a second later. He quite literally dragged me out of my apartment, and I still struggled against his hold, but it was no use. She…

Flames engulfed the apartment the millisecond we burst out of the front door.

* * *

In a scene that could be from a very intense drama film, and according to Dean, Dad told him that the current setup was exactly like after Mom's death by supernatural creature, a fire truck was parked outside the building, firemen and police keeping back gawkers. Dean, Adam, Bree, Lis and Elena (Adam or Dean must've called them to hurry to my now-burnt down apartment, and _Jess_ , I... _God_...) all looked on, then after a moment, they walked back to the Impala. I was standing behind the open trunk, loading a shotgun full of salt rounds. Dean looked at the trunk, then at me, then at my brother and friends, then back to me. No one said a word. My face was set in a mask of desperate anger. I looked up, taking note of the fact that Adam and Elena were holding hands, and that Alyssa and Dean were holding hands, too. I knew that it was so they could comfort each other because of the trauma that had been brought to light, years after their own families' deaths. Bree gently placed her hand on my shoulder. That was her comforting me. We're all comforting each other in some way.

However, despite being angry and grieving, I didn't push Bree away or shrug her hand off my body - I found I didn't want to.

I sighed, nodded to let them know I was as okay as I could be, considering the tragic circumstances, and tossed the shotgun into the trunk.

"We got work to do." I said in a hard, serious tone, then shut the trunk.

I swore that the little black box - the one that held the engagement ring of a now destroyed future with the love of my life, the future I had worked so hard for - seemed to grow in the back of my pocket, and it was like it was calling out to me.

Right then and there, I promised that I would get my revenge.

I was going to kill whatever had enough guts to _dare_ lay a hand on Jessica, on my Mom, on the Drakes' family members, too.

And I wouldn't stop until it was dead, rotting six feet under.

* * *

 **Footnote** _ **(*)**_ **/** **#1: Dean says this in 5x13, but I figured it would be cool if he thought it in the Pilot episode and then aloud (roughly) two years later.**

 **Footnote** _ **(*)**_ **/** **#2: I know Dean mentioned it, but the reason Adam _also_ mentioned it wasn't on purpose. I wanted to convey that the brothers are on the same wave-length about this topic. Great minds think alike and all that.**

* * *

 **A/N: And so, the long, exciting and crazy journey that is Supernatural begins...**

 **Reviews, favorites and comments are loved. Please send everyone in this story some, because they could use it, and they're all going to need it with the plans I have for TRLA. But I really hope you like this story so far! What do you guys think of my OCs? Do you like the changes I've made to Supernatural canon so far, particularly with Adam, who we literally know the bare minimum about canonically, and his relationship with Sam and Dean? Please let me know.**

 **Word count of this chapter:** **15,335** **. Last updated: 6/15/19.**

 **Word count of the** **entirety** **of the Pilot (1x01) episode, split into three parts:** **39,560** **. Last updated: 6/17/19.**


	4. I Went to the Woods

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize. I only own my OCs, original plots/canon divergences [aka: original writing] (technically? I think? idk please don't sue me), and whatever else you don't recognize.**

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 **Enjoy the fourth chapter of TRLT!**

* * *

 **Chapter Four: I Went to the Woods**

 **aka: WENDIGO (part one)**

 **Date: November 2nd, 2005**

 **Flashback / location: The old Welch home, right after Constance and her kids vanished**

 **Bree's POV**

* * *

A million questions about the little staring contest Elena and Constance had just had crowded my mind as I slid my gun in the waistband of my jeans. It was weirder than anything I've ever seen before, and that was saying something, in fact it was _screaming_ something. None of the ghosts she fought prior to this case had _ever_ stared at her like that. The reason I knew that was because she has never hunted alone, except for that one time in Tennessee when she took care of shapeshifters', but I digress. No ghost had ever looked at the rest of us like that, either. It was also extremely unsettling. Some random ghost lady, who we never met when she was still in the land of the living (and who _died_ nine years Elena was born, which I didn't forget about), staring for a long period of time at my little sister wasn't something I could just ignore or shake off; chalk it up as just another part of the job. That was something else entirely.

And that scared me.

The thought that maybe the staring contest had something to do with the "protect Adam and Elena" message immediately called to me when I thought about it. But why didn't she look at Adam, too? Did the ghost know about his message because of the fact he was on his phone, calling Dean, and didn't realize Constance had slipped into the backseat? Was the phone call faked _by_ Constance? Did she possess John to say that? I filed that thought away to stew on it later.

Great. We had yet another oddity added on top of a heaping pile of crap we couldn't begin to explain. From the looks of my friends and sisters, they couldn't explain why _that_ happened either. Elena looked shaken up about it. I wouldn't hold it against her if she never wanted to speak about that experience ever again, but I knew that it would help her theorize and be comforted if she did. I wanted her to talk about it – not to make her uncomfortable or send her into a panic attack, but if she bottled that up, I was worried what that would do to her mentality. Or maybe I had been overthinking, tricking myself into thinking that she's as bothered by it as I _think_ she is. Maybe she wasn't bothered.

But I doubted it.

While Sam, Dean and I cleaned off the debris of the house from the Impala, Elena and Alyssa helped Adam into the back of it. Adam looked out a little out of it and I hoped he didn't have a concussion. I've had my fair share of those, and they sucked each time I had one.

"Hey, Drake?" Dean addressed to me, and I looked over at him. "Smart thinking with shooting through the window at that bitch." I could almost hear the ' _but_ ' in his tone _._ Instead of responding, I simply waited patiently for him to continue. "But-" Yep. There it was. "-if you shoot through Baby's window like that again, I'll shoot _you_."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sam roll his eyes.

I didn't respond. I figured it would be easier to just stay quiet instead of making a snappy comment, albeit though it was a part of my brand for me for me to do so. I didn't feel like bickering with him even if it was meant to be playful. I was too exhausted and worried about Elena to banter.

After we helped clean the roof of the Impala off, Lis and I walked back towards our car. Elena stayed behind with the Winchesters, probably to fuss over Adam's injury and help move some other debris that had been left around the car rather than on top of it. I could feel their eyes on us as we walked. I coughed slightly in discomfort as dust kicked up from our shoes.

"This place is quite the shithole." My twin said, looking back at the destroyed Welch home. "But it's not the worst. Remember that house in Vanceberg?" That hunt was nearly eight years ago.

"Like it was yesterday. Remember when that nail from board sticking up went through John's shoe and we freaked out because we thought he was going to get Tetanus?"

"Yep. Good times." Lis unlocked the car and we got in. She picked up the rag she had used earlier to try and get the mud off her face and dumped the half-empty bottle of water she had picked up from the cup holder, scrubbing and wiping her hands clean of Adam's still-wet blood. After successfully cleaning her hands and wiping her hands dry with the roll of paper towels Elena had bought during the much-needed shopping trip, she scratched her forehead, then groaned softly. "That was…" she paused, probably trying to gather her wits, "an experience. Both that hunt and this one." She finished, sticking her hands out the window to squeeze the water and blood out of the rag onto the Earth. I cringed at the noises it made.

I chuckled, dragging my hand down my face, then placed my hands in my lap, looking out the window and out towards my friends and Elena. I could tell they were talking, but I wasn't sure about what. It could be any number of things, knowing them. "So…" I began. "Why do you think whatever the hell that was," I made a vague hand-gesture towards the house, "happened between our dear sibling and a dead woman who tried to kill us?"

"No clue." My twin said, sounding as incredulous about the new development as I felt. Why were the dead suddenly taking interest in Elena? Was it a one-time thing, where it would only happen once and that was that? Or would it happen on another hunt? "Ghosts taking a sudden interest in freshly minted fifteen-year-old females creeps me out."

Yeah. I needed a drink. Or three. There was still the one other elephant in the room that hadn't been addressed between the six of us. I wondered if we'd ever talk about it as a group and put our heads together, or if we weren't going to discuss with everyone at all. But that wouldn't make sense, because it's Adam and Elena. We love them and want to keep them safe, even if they say they can take care of themselves.

After a couple moments, I saw my sisters jump off the destroyed porch, beginning to walk towards the car, her arms wrapped tightly around what I instantly recognized as one of Dean's trusty leather jackets. She was hugging it close to her body. Because it was so big (borderline ill-fitting) on her small stature, her hands didn't come out the sleeves. She got into the backseat and sat down on the passengers' side, the white leather creaking slightly but familiarly underneath her weight. I turned around to look at her, curious.

"What's up with the jacket?"

She lifted one shoulder up into a half-shrug. "Dean let me have it. He probably thinks I'm in shock."

Lis turned around to look at her, too. She looked at her sort of intensely then asked in a carefully neutral tone: "Are you in shock?" It wasn't blunt, though. A quick once over her told me she wasn't. She was just shaken up like the rest of us.

She shook her head, blonde hair moving side to side with the movement. "No." Her voice was flat.

"Are you okay?"

I felt a twinge of annoyance surge through _me_ , and I wasn't even the one who got asked that. Goddamn it, why ask such stupid questions? It's obvious that Elena wasn't okay.

She frowned. "No, I'm not okay. Some ghost thought it was a fantastic idea to play a round of 'Blink First' with me." Sarcasm dripped from her tone like acid dripping onto wood, eating through the material within seconds flat. I don't know where she got being so sarcastic from, it defiantly wasn't from our parents (maybe it rubbed off on her from being around Adam, Sam and Dean – and John – for every day since she was a baby?); sometimes it was amusing, other times it was annoying. This instance would be where it was annoying rather than amusing.

Still, though, I would be lying if I said I wasn't expecting something along those lines for Elena's response to a (stupid) question. I turned back around at nearly the same time Lis did. I looked out the window when I heard the Impala's engine roar to life even through the closed window.

Even though I was deadly curious ( _curiosity kills the cat, Bree,_ I reminded myself) I didn't want to pressure her into talking about it, especially not minutes after the incident in question occurred. When it was still fresh in everyone's minds, too. Hell, Elena was probably playing it over and over in her head. She'd talk about it when she was ready to.

Elena toed off her shoes then pulled the hair-tie off her wrist, pulling her hair up into a ponytail. "So, are we going to talk about it?"

"Do _you_ want to talk about it?" Lis asked. For a moment, we watched the Impala course correct itself and drive near our car. She shook her head, pushing some of her hair out of her face.

"Not right now."

I took the win. It was better than a flat out 'no'.

The boys' car stopped parallel to ours and Sam rolled down his window. Lis did the same with hers. Dean leaned forward, Adam and Sam looking at us as well. "Hey, there's a couple things we should catch up on as soon as possible. How about tomorrow, after we get cleaned up," he looked back at Adam when he said that, "and we get some sleep, we can talk over coffee and breakfast at that diner I was going to go to?"

"Before you got intercepted right outside the motel room?"

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Elena told you?"

"Adam did." She corrected. "But that sounds great." Even though her head was turned, my twin-tuition told me she was smiling.

"Awesome. See you in a few hours." Adam and Sam waved at us.

"Bye." Elena, Lis and I said, watching the Impala drive away a couple moments after. Lis waited until we couldn't see them anymore and started Black Widow's engine. I assumed we were heading back towards the motel John had been staying at. The Welch home became nothing but an old home once more.

* * *

The drive back to the motel was silent but calm. And much needed. It gave me some time to think about Elena's staring contest with the ghost and John's message. We even passed by Stanford on the way and kept driving until it was about four miles behind us. We didn't talk much to each other, simply sitting in our seats and listening to whatever overplayed song Lis decided to put on. There was an unspoken rule that the driver of Black Widow (Alyssa) had full control over the radio/music, which I generally obliged to. However, when her phone rang, I turned down the music so she could hear. She answered the call.

"Hello?"

After whoever was on the other line spoke, Lis's eyes grew comically wide. She slammed on the brakes, and I had to grip the handle to keep myself upright, and so my head didn't slam against the dashboard. I heard Elena gasp and then let out a string of curse - loudly and without shame. She came up with one rather creative string of swear words. I would've been proud of her if I hadn't been so freaked out by the sudden stop of the car and the rapid and massive change in Lis's demeanor, who still listening intently to whoever was speaking. I couldn't hear their words over the pounding of my heart but judging by her facial expression and the intense and alarming amount of stress I saw on her face, whatever the hell was happening wasn't good. She quickly made a U-turn, the unpleasant smell of burning rubber filling my nostrils as she pressed her foot down harder onto the accelerator, hearing the car's engine purr loudly.

"Alyssa, what's going on?" Elena demanded, holding onto the back of my seat as the car sped up to sixty miles per hour, seventy miles per hour, seventy-five, and climbing. I could barely make out the 'Get here, now' part before she hung the phone up, her eyes focused on the blurring road in front of her face. "Who's on the other line?"

She dropped the hand that was holding her phone down onto her lap; she didn't bother to pick it up and put it somewhere else, someplace where it would be more stable than there. She put that same hand, the one that dropped her phone, on the steering wheel and tightened her grip on it until her knuckles were white. She looked freaked out and worried. That was never good. Her knuckles turned bone white from gripping the wheel so hard. "That was Adam." She said, having to raise her voice slightly over the booming engine. "He told me that Dean's watch stopped ticking a-and the radio cut to static about a minute after the Impala left the front walkway of Sam's apartment building."

Crap. Crap. That was bad. Like, astronomically bad. Like shit-is-going-down-right-at-this-moment _bad_. Like something-bad-might-have-already-happened-and-we're-too-late- _oh_ - _fuck_ bad.

"Those are signs of demonic activity. Electronics go haywire." Elena said, more to herself than to us. Yeah. That _really_ wasn't good.

"Near Stanford?" I asked.

"Yeah, near there. Adam thinks something nasty might be going after his brother." She said at a normal pitch.

"Alyssa?"

She didn't turn to look at me. "Yeah?"

"Drive faster."

"Yes ma'am." She did as I told her to, punching the gas. The car shot forward, and landscape passed us in a blur. I leaned back in my seat, my head pressing back against the headrest from how fast we were zipping down miles of empty, darkened road, sighing shakily, my thoughts racing faster than the car was zooming down the road, and _much_ faster than how quick I could sort through said thoughts. Even though I only had a vague idea of what was going on (and pressing Lis for details wasn't my number one thought at the moment, either, because I had a feeling what she just shared with us is all she knows), I was worried about Sam.

I just hoped we weren't too late.

* * *

 **Flashback / location: Outside of Sam's apartment**

* * *

When we pulled up to the apartment building, it was so much worse than I could have imagined. Fire and smoke were spilling out of the broken window, shattered glass strewn everywhere on the lawn in front of the second story apartment – Sam's, I guessed – and the Impala sat right outside. A figure, Adam I quickly realized, was moving towards the apartment building. Quick as lightning, Lis was out of the car and sprinting towards him. Elena and I followed her, and I tried not to look up at the burning building, fearing the worst for my friends' wellbeing.

Lis tackled Adam to the ground and then wrapped her arms around his waist tightly, hauling him back towards the safety of the Impala, where it sat away from the flames. He was kicking and screaming the entire way, struggling to break free. "No! Let me go, Lis! I have to get in there! They could be trapped somewhere i-in the apartment, _dying_ for all we know! Please, I-I'm begging you, let me go in there! I can't lose my b-brothers!" He shouted. Onlookers - people from the surrounding apartments - began to emerge from their homes, pointing towards the burning apartment building and murmuring. Not two seconds later, I heard sirens cut through the air, and they sounded shockingly close. I didn't know how far the firehouse was from the apartment complex, but I knew they'd get here soon. That was good.

"No way am I letting you go into a burning building!" Lis snapped back.

Elena and I rushed over to him, attempting to calm him down, but he wasn't having it. He kept trying to break out of Lis's grip, screaming bloody murder. After a few moments, though, the fight went out of his body like a balloon deflating. He sunk down to his knees, pulling my twin down with him onto the cement sidewalk, breathing heavily. I could see tears beginning to form in his eyes. Elena crouched down next to our friend and hugged him tightly, her eyes locked onto the front door of the apartment building. She gently rubbed his back and whispered to him, doing her best to calm the worried and stressed fifteen-year-old down.

After a horrible moment of not seeing anyone moving towards the front door, and my mind immediately beginning to fear the worst for the brothers (and conjuring them trapped somewhere under debris, like Adam had), two large figures emerged from the flames, coughing loudly and gasping for breath. I immediately recognized them as Sam and Dean. There was a little bit of soot on Sam's face. Besides the coughing, they didn't look too badly hurt. Thank goodness.

As soon as Adam saw his brothers approaching, he shot up from his position and rushed over to them, throwing his arms around them tightly and pulling them close, refusing to let them go. He kept repeating phrases like "I'm glad you're okay" and "thank God" and "don't _ever_ do that again". After Sam turned his head away from his brothers to cough rather violently, he hugged him back. Dean had his arms wrapped around Adam's waist and Sam's shoulder, and Sam's arms were around Adam's and, from the looks of it, Dean's waist. It would've been sweet under different circumstances.

Wait. Jess. My eyes went wide. She hasn't come out of the building yet. Or, oh no… is she…

It apparently clicked in Elena's head, too, because she stood up from where she had been squatting in front of the Impala, locking eyes with Dean. She opened her mouth, but he shook his head, his brows pinched, lips pressed together in a hard, thin line. A warning look of " _don't_ " crossed his face, flickered across his green eyes. In that moment, my suspicions were confirmed, and I flinched, gazing down at the cement for a few seconds to get my shit together.

She's dead.

An odd combination of dismay and sympathy settled into my gut right after. I saw Lis flinch out of the corner of my eye. Elena exhaled sharply. Sam wasn't looking at us, but I knew he was grieving – and angry. Past consoling, if I had to guess.

When Dean mouthed "It wasn't a normal fire.", it felt like the air just got sucked out of my lungs. Lis and Ellie stiffened, too. I saw Lis's hands clench into fists. I had a feeling that whatever killed Jess was the same thing that killed my family and the Sam and Dean's mother.

My heart ached in my chest for Sam; it really, really did. I couldn't imagine what he was going through – and for a second time, too, because his mother died in an _unnatural_ fire as well. But I couldn't imagine what he was going through entirely, anyway. My aunt, uncle and cousins were killed in the same way when myself and Alyssa were very young, but I couldn't recall what happened it because, well… like I said before, I was young. Losing your significant other in an _unnatural_ fire wasn't something I could relate to. Even though I'm twenty-three, I haven't had a significant other. Having bonds like that – especially to non-hunters – would only end up with them getting hurt because some freaking demon or other monster could catch wind of it, and they could end up hurting that friend or significant other or _whoever_.

I swallowed hard, looking at Elena. My sister took a deep breath to calm herself down, but I could see how upset it was making her. Mostly though, it was Sam's emotions that were making her so upset. I could see in her expression that was the main reason why she was upset; it was because Sam was upset.

I winced when I saw a tear roll down the middle Winchester's cheeks, then another, then two more out of both eyes at almost the same time. They left tear tracks on his sooty face. The fire seemed to make their silhouettes glow in a way that was almost angelic. He broke away from Adam, dropped his other arm away from Dean's shoulder, then slowly lifted his hand up to his face. I heard him choke on a sob as he wiped tears away from his cheeks. He turned to look at what remained of his apartment building, of his old life. He was also probably trying to compose himself before we could see him break down aside from the few tears I just saw him shed. Not that I would blame him if he broke down even more.

I vaguely wondered what the firemen or police would say happened in the fire – would they say it was just a tragic accident? Would Sam be blamed; possibly become a suspect in the fire? Would it be suspicious if he just left with us right after the fire, without staying for questioning, anything like that? Or would we stick around for a few days, would Sam go to the funeral, grieve for a week or so, and then get back on the road? What would happen?

The sirens drew closer, the onlookers kept whispering amongst themselves as the fire raged on, and Sam was still (presumably) trying to compose himself. After a moment he turned back around, shoulders stiffening, and I noticed that there was a major shift in his expression. He went from grieving and in a bit of shock to icy anger.

His face was set in a mask of hard, icy, desperate anger. It was one I saw John's face masked in every day since I was little. Well, before he went missing and I couldn't see his face, because, you know, he's freaking _missing_ , if you know what I'm getting at. The expression was the same one I saw every day on my twins' face, the one I saw when I stared into a crappy motel mirror or Black Widow's mirrors, and sometimes on Dean, Elena and Adam's faces as well. It was one that screamed he was out for revenge, for blood. I knew he wouldn't stop gunning for revenge until it – and by it, I mean everything; from the fact that his girlfriend died in an _unnatural_ fire to the safe life he had built up, only for the rug (aka: his old life) to be torn so violently and so suddenly like that – was over.

We would help him avenge Jess, his Mom, my family.

But we wouldn't get revenge by ourselves. Sam wouldn't. Trying to get revenge on your own isn't something that could be easily done. He should know that.

We would get our revenge – but we would get it _together_ , as a group. No, not just as a group, but as a family. The Drake siblings would avenge our aunt, uncle and cousins' deaths over twenty years ago, the Winchester siblings (minus Adam, of course) their mother's death, and John his wife's death, and now the middle son would get avenge an innocent person's death: Jessica. His girlfriend. Seven heads (the seventh being John, of course) are better than one, after all. While we're individually strong, we're much stronger as a group.

The Winchester-Drake dynamic are basically unstoppable. That might sound bias given that I'm a Drake and my best (and only) friends are Winchesters, but it's very true.

Killing the thing that killed our loved ones would not only fill our need for vengeance (and closure), but it would keep other people safe, too. Other families wouldn't be destroyed by a tragedy like this one. People wouldn't be grieving in the way Sam has experienced. Parents wouldn't have to go through what Jessica's parents would be going through (soon) when they got the news that their daughter died tragically – that she died in a "mysterious and tragic" house fire. I think that them not knowing about what lurks in the shadows is worse, though. They'd probably just chalk it up to a mysterious, tragic fire. Sam's burdened with the knowledge that it wasn't a mysterious fire, it was deliberate. The thing that killed his mother _also_ killed his girlfriend.

Saving people, hunting things? _That's_ why we fight. We fight to keep people safe and to prevent some monster from ripping apart families, most times literally.

* * *

 **Flashback ends**

* * *

I watched Sam throw the rifle into the back of the Impala, flinching when it clattered loudly against a couple of weapons and other items. Stakes rattled and a jug of holy water sloshed within its container, and the dreamcatcher that was hanging moved back and forth slightly from the force and sudden weight being added to the trunk, and so violently. "We got work to do." He said, then slammed the trunk closed. I flinched once again at the loud noise. I knew he was angry. He had every right to be. Without a word, he very gently shrugged my hand off his shoulder and moved past all of us. He walked a little way down the street, his head down, his shoulders hunched, his hands shoved into his jacket pockets. Dean looked over at the fire truck and the onlookers, then back at the Impala, which he had to move so the fire department could take care of the fire and keep the area clear for safety reasons. He and Lis looked at each other, then at Adam and Elena, then at me. Dean shook his head when he looked at me then back to Lis, seemingly for conformation, but when they looked to Elena and the man looked at my twin, she nodded. The two eldest siblings in the group seemed to have a conversation in their heads, much like Lis and I would have, being twins and all. When Lis shrugged, Dean violently gestured towards Elena. He wasn't at all subtle about it. She frowned.

"What?"

"I, um, think it's best if _you_ go talk to Sam." Dean said, looking over at his brothers turned back. Adam shifted his weight, looking at Ellie. I noticed that they were still holding hands. It looked so natural. Their bond is undeniable.

She frowned even more. "Um… why me?"

"You're the most empathetic person I've ever met. You know how to read people and comfort them. Besides, you're better at the whole "emotions" thing. I think we can agree on that, right?"

He made two good points. The first point being that Elena's so freaking empathetic and in tune with her (and others) emotions that it shocks me sometimes, and I'm her relative. It's like she only had to look into someone's eyes to understand what they're thinking or feeling. In a different life she could have been a therapist. Someone who _helps_ people with words and just by being there to be a ramble-sponge rather than being armed with weapons and knowledge that would send her straight to the nuthouse if anyone ever overheard one of her hunter conversations. The second point being that the Winchester-Drake 'family' is generally a frosty, awkward bunch when it comes to talking about or even understanding emotions. It's not that we're robots or sociopaths, it's just that we don't prefer to talk about them, and we sweep them under the rug, do our best to pretend they're not there. Elena's the complete opposite. There's something about her that just makes you want to talk to her about your thoughts and feelings. Out of all of us, she tends to talk the most about her feelings. She's only never _not_ spoken about what she's felt about whatever she's thinking about or reacting emotionally what's going on right in front of her a handful of times.

Some might say she's too "emotional" to be a hunter and all of her "aliments" might hinder her, but she works way harder than your apple-pie-life, normal fifteen-year-old – Adam too. She's a damn good hunter. Anyone who doesn't see how hard she works and how strong she is (mentally, physically and emotionally) are just plain dumb or arrogant. My little sister is a freaking badass. If anyone was to belittle her in any way, none of us would be thrilled. Hell, Adam might even punch that person. So would Dean, to be honest. And Alyssa, too.

Can you tell that we're overprotective of the "baby of the family"? Because hell yeah, we are. If you want my opinion, I don't see that as a bad thing. Protecting a younger sibling is what we're supposed to do, right?

But hey, I could be bias.

As for the rest of us, we tend bottle our emotions up. That is not healthy, but it's what we do best. Action first, talk later. And if that's what we do best, I only have three things to say about that. The first: yikes, the second: How does that reflect on our mental/emotional states (or lack thereof – and wow that's extremely concerning now that the thought has popped up in my head)? Finally, the third thing I want to say about _that_ is this: I blame shitty parenting – or no parenting where our "mother" is concerned – for that. At least I'm self-aware, right?

Elena thought about it for a couple moments, then untangled her hand from Adam's and walked over to Sam, gently touching his arm. He turned to look at her and she hugged him tightly. I didn't feel like eavesdropping on the conversation, so I grabbed Dean's arm and pulled him away from Adam and Alyssa so we could talk privately. I was shaken up from the last two days' events. I needed some reassurance and closure.

"You okay?"

"I'm okay. No burns or cuts from glass or anything." He held out his arms to show me. I nodded, knowing that he was physically okay. "What's up, Bree?"

"Can you explain to me what happened in there?" I asked, as gently as I could.

He looked back at the apartment building, where firemen were still putting out the blaze with a powerful firetruck hose. A couple of people were going back to wherever they came from now that the fire was being put out, the drama of the situation/their interest in it diminishing. "I… Jess was pinned to the ceiling, her stomach s-slashed." He murmured. He looked back at Sam. "Sammy was on the bed as the fire was supernaturally set. H-her body…" he trailed off, swallowing hard. "I tried to drag him out, but he struggled against me, running back inside the bedroom."

I frowned. "He ran back inside the bedroom? Why?"

"To grab something out of his dresser. I didn't see what it was, but it must've been damn important to him if he shoved me away like that." He rolled his shoulders. "To run back into a room that was on _fire_ to get it before it burned up."

I wondered what was so important to him that would make him do that. "I would advise not asking him about it for a little while." I warned. Dean ran his slightly sooty fingers carding through his hair and grunted. When the breeze blew in my direction, the smell of like ash, smoke and fire wafted from him to me. I wrinkled my nose a bit.

"Dude, you need another shower. But I don't know if Lis would want to join you if you smell like fire and stuff like that. It might be too overwhelming for her to handle. You know how sensitive her nose is." I joked, attempting to diffuse the tension.

That, at least, got a chuckle. Win in my book. "You're right." I decided switching topics was a good idea.

"So, what do we do now?"

He paused, thinking about the options. "We could stay here, investigate for a bit, at least until after the funeral. Or, Sam, at least. Sam not going to the funeral of-of his girlfriend would be suspicious." It's oddly comforting to know that I wasn't the only one who thought that it would be weird if we just left right after the fire. "If we don't find anything concrete after poking around here for a while, we do what we were going to before," he lifted his hand up and pointed back towards the apartment building, "that happened. We go Blackwater. Find Dad. Reconvene and go hunt down the thing that killed our loved ones – together."

"Sounds like a solid plan."

He gently patted my shoulder. "Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?"

 _Well, maybe not "talk" about per say._ I thought, then sprung into action.

Wordlessly, I pulled my best friend in for a hug, my arms winding tightly around his mid-back. Dean hugged me back instantly, his arms slipping around my shoulders, pulling me closer to him. He rested his chin on top of my head, and I heard him exhale shakily. He's like my big brother.

"I thought I lost you a-and Sam…" I felt my throat tighten and my heart leap in my throat. I choked up, burying my head into his familiar t-shirt, narrowly missing colliding nose-first with the amulet Sam got him when we were younger.

"Hey," he said gently, "you didn't. It's gonna take more than an apartment fire to take us both out."

I felt a little better knowing this was true. They're both strong. In the past, Dean has told me that if he was to die, he'd prefer to go out swinging saving one of us than growing up, getting old and dying.

When I heard Sam and Elena making their way back to the Impala, I pulled away from him and stood up on my tiptoes, looking past his shoulder so I could gauge their reactions. Elena had her arm wrapped around his waist, and he had his arm around her shoulder in what looked like a one-armed hug. It would've been cute had the circumstances been anything other than Sam's girlfriend dying in the place he had called home for the past four years. Lis and Adam were near Black Widow, whispering to one another about something I probably wouldn't have been too invested in, anyway. We walked back over to them.

"Hey, uh…" Lis tried.

He shook his head, clenching his jaw. "I'll be fine." He reached into his jacket pocket and balled his hand up into a fist, exhaling slowly. "Are we going to go, or what? Staying around for questioning by the cops isn't something I'd like to experience. There's a motel near here. We'll be good there." He looked at me, then Lis, then Elena. "Did you two check out of the other motel?"

Elena nodded. "Yeah."

"Good." He looked at all of us, his eyes filled with steely determination. "What are we waiting for? Let's head there and start theorizing, yeah?" Without waiting for a response from any of us, he turned on his heel and walked toward the cars.

Not wanting to argue with him while he was in this state, we simply went along with whatever he wanted. I saw Elena hug Adam one more time before she headed off towards the Pontiac. Lis and Dean watched Sam open the Impala's door and get into the passenger's seat. She winced when Sam slammed the door shut loudly and Dean rolled his eyes, looking miffed that he slammed his car's door shut as loud as he did. But slamming the door shut like in anger was a better alternative, to, say, punching someone in the face. The two eldest siblings of our little group looked at each other, then at Adam and I.

"See you later?" Adam asked.

Lis nodded and gently patted his shoulder. "Of course. See you then."

We went back to our respective cars.

* * *

 **Date: November 10th, 2005**

 **Sam's POV**

* * *

Birds chirped lightly and chirped out a song as I, wearing a suit and tie and carrying a bouquet of various fresh flowers excluding roses, slowly walked through an otherwise deserted cemetery. The black suit jacket absorbed the sun's rays. I did my best to ignore the sun, which beamed down on me. It felt like a spotlight shining right on my back. It was a little uncomfortable. My footfalls were light against the surprisingly hydrated grass. I didn't bother listening to the birdsong – it would have calmed me if I wasn't in a graveyard, moving towards a particular gravestone, my heart in my feet. I felt a little sick.

I sighed and stopped next to a small marble gravestone. The headstone read "Jessica Lee Moore", "Beloved Daughter", "January 24th, 1984 – November 2nd, 2005". I winced. She was just twenty-one years old. I gripped the bouquet tighter, trying to ground myself and keep myself under control, but it was hard. There was a small picture of a grinning Jess set into the stone above her name, a black-and-white picture of her leaning against the stone between a white teddy bear and a wooden box with a crucifix leaning on the picture, a small American flag next to the box, and three candles standing on the gravestone; one was of the Virgin de Guadalupe.

I looked between the gravestone and the flowers. "I, uh…" I laughed softly. "You always said roses were, were lame, so I brought you, uh..." I looked at the picture set into the gravestone, then looked away, choking back more tears. I stepped closer to it, overwhelmed with emotions. "Jess... oh God..." I kneeled to set the flowers down, my mind screaming at me that it was my fault she died. And it was entirely my fault. "I should have protected you. I should have told you the truth." _I should have been there to protect you_ was left unsaid. I could bring myself to think about that, though. Thinking about that last bit would have just made more tears flow from my eyes.

I'm tired of losing people I care about and watching the people that the girls care about get hurt, too. I'm tired of it all already, and I just got _back_ into hunting after four years.

As soon as I leaned the flowers in front of the crucifix, an arm covered in dirt shot out of the ground and grabbed me by my wrist.

* * *

When I jerked awake and my eyes snapped open, I nearly hit my head on the window. Disorientated, my other hand came up to wrap around my wrist tightly, as if I was trying to pull the hand I saw in my dream off my body. I blinked and realized that I was okay, there was no hand. In reality I was riding shotgun next to Dean, Adam in the backseat, the tertiary humming along to Foreigner's "Hot-Blooded", which was playing on the radio. The cemetery visit was days behind us. I squeezed the wrist my other hand gripped gingerly, feeling a phantom touch.

I blinked, trying to keep my shit together. I didn't want to lose it in front of my brothers, even if I knew they wouldn't have made fun of me for it. Dean looked over at me, concerned.

"You okay?"

I looked over at Dean then away, focusing on the landscape that whizzed past us in blurs. "Yeah. I'm fine." I lied.

"Another nightmare?"

I cleared my throat but didn't answer verbally. My silence was the confirmation that yes, it was that.

"You wanna drive for a while?" He asked, and that surprised me. I heard Adam's pen stop scratching against the paper a second later. He was probably just as surprised as I was at the question.

I laughed, looking in the rearview mirror at Adam to see his reaction. He was looking at the back of Dean's head, his eyes a little wide, his jaw slack.

"Dean, your whole life you never once asked me that." I said, and not more than three seconds later Adam blurted out: "Dude, I've been wanting to drive Baby for a few months now, and you and Dad refuse me every time. I'm fifteen."

"Just thought you might want to. Never mind." He directed to me, then quickly looked back at Adam. "You turned fifteen like a month and two weeks ago, little brother. No way am I letting you touch my precious car until you're sixteen, at least. Sorry." He didn't sound apologetic, but I knew he wasn't really going to be. If there's four things I know about Dean, they are: He's overprotective of us, he loves pie, he loves the Impala more than anything, and he _definitely_ has a crush on Alyssa but is probably too worried about everything that's going on to pursue his feelings - or even think about them.

Adam grumbled underneath his breath. I could sense the famous Winchester eyeroll even without turning to look at him. "No fair. Dad would let me drive…" He's driven

"Well, Dad's not here." Dean reminded him. " _I'm_ here, lucky for you and the wellbeing of this wonderful car." He gently tapped the dashboard.

I fought back a tiny smile, feeling my mood improve just hearing my brothers banter back and forth. In my four years I've been away from them, and in the time I dropped contact with them, I forgot just how much I missed Adam and Dean's talks, which ranged from silly and sarcastic to logically planning what to do on a hunt. It brought me comfort. "Look, man, you're worried about me." I said, getting back to the topic at hand. "I get it, and thank you, but I'm perfectly okay."

"Mm-hm." Dean mumbled. Adam didn't say anything. I heard him resume writing.

I grabbed a map. "All right, where are we?" I asked.

"We are just outside of Grand Junction." Dean replied.

I folded down the map, which displayed the state of Colorado. There was a large red X labeled 35-111 on it, which Adam had marked last night. "You know what? Maybe we shouldn't have left Stanford so soon."

"Sam, we dug around there for a week." Dean said, speeding up the Impala a bit. "The six of us – _six_ – came up with nothing. If you wanna find the thing that killed Jessica—"

"We gotta find Dad first." I finished.

"Dad disappearing and this thing showing up again after twenty-two years, it's no coincidence. Dad will have answers. He'll know what to do." He sounded confident.

 _It's blind faith_. A little voice inside my head whispered. I agreed with it.

"It's weird, man. These coordinates he left us." I mumbled. "This Blackwater Ridge."

"What about it?" Adam asked, and I barely heard the crinkle of paper over the music blasting from the radio, which Dean had slightly increased the volume of a couple seconds ago, now that I was awake and alert. I swear, if he keeps listening to music at that volume, he's going to get tinnitus or go deaf.

"There's nothing there. It's just woods." I put down the map, frowning. "Why is he sending us to the middle of nowhere?" I mused aloud, just as we drove past the National Forest sign that said, "Welcome to LOST CREEK COLORADO National Forest". I leaned back in my seat, then folded the map.

"Oh, Bree called about thirty minutes ago." Adam said suddenly.

That got my attention. "Why did she call?"

"Apparently, the girls caught wind of a hunt in Montrose. They're heading there now."

Wait… that means…

"They're not going to reunite with Dad?" I asked them, my tone hardening slightly. "Why did they even bother to come with us if they're not even going to _be here_ when we see him once we," I tapped the map with my fingertips, "get to this location?" The one – yes, one – silver lining I instantly saw was that we'd all be in the same state. It wasn't like they were going to Florida or anything insane like that. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dean glance sharply at me. I looked right back at him and, for the first time in a while, noticed that he looked a little annoyed with the snappy tone I had developed since that night. Probably because I used it regarding the girls. I guess that was his overprotective instincts kicking in.

One time, when I was eleven, I asked why a then-fifteen-year-old Dean was so overprotective of them, and I (beforehand) concluded that the reason was because they're girls, therefore they "needed" to be protected by a boy, which I realized is a load of bullcrap when I was seventeen. But I figured they needed to be protected, especially Elena, who was only four years old at the time. She didn't know about the supernatural world. Dean shut that conclusion down fast once he realized that was what I came up with. He told me that the reason he's so overprotective of them is because he sees them all like "the little sisters I never knew I wanted, but now have and love." Then, he said that he "watches over them the same amount I do with you. And Adam." That made me realize how overprotective he was of both of us – something I hadn't _seen_ firsthand because, well, I hadn't noticed it when that protectiveness revolved around _me_ , really. Possibly because I wasn't actively looking for it which means I didn't notice it. Afterwards, I started to notice that overprotectiveness with Adam, too.

But now, with Dad's message… it was like his already high overprotective instincts over all of us skyrocketed to near-concerning levels.

"Sam, we don't even know if he's in Blackwater. He wasn't in Jericho." Adam said calmly. "Let the girls do their own thing. They're completely capable of working a case without the three of us being there." I heard his seatbelt unbuckling, and the creak of leather underneath his weight right after. A quick glance backwards revealed that he was getting comfortable, laying lengthwise in the backseats, his head propped up by his arm that was resting on the pillow. I envied his ability to do that; I wouldn't be able to fit there, even if I wanted to. I was gigantic. My legs would have been cramped. I didn't doubt that when Adam hit his next growth spurt, his days of resting like that in the backseats would end. "They've done it a handful of times before. Alyssa and Aubrey started doing that a year ago. Dad said that Ellie was skilled enough to join them on their separate cases a couple weeks ago. I've joined them, too. He's completely right, by the way. She's one badass hunter." His tone switched from calm to angry vehemence. "Not that _you_ would know about that change, because you were gone for four friggin' years."

Dean said our brother's name in a warning tone, trying to shut him up before he said anything else that might set me off. I think he thought I was going to snap at him, since Stanford was still a very open, very fresh wound. As in it's barely a week old and he just poured salt into that festering wound. I think Dean knew that. I also think he assumed I had a short fuse. That is correct.

I grimaced as I saw a flash of that night rush through my head. What happened just a week ago felt like it happened yesterday – probably because I keep dreaming about it. I hated it. It wasn't pleasant to relive the memory of her burning in front of my eyes and blaming me for it, let me tell you.

I let out a long, drawn out sigh, doing my best not to explode on him, who had a right to be frustrated with me. I knew he had a point. I _wouldn't_ have known about it since I was trying to have a normal life and trying to forget all about hunting. All the shit I've seen and done. Dad. _I_ left Adam, Dean, Lis, Bree and Elena (and Dad) behind. The dynamic had to shift sooner or later - they had to pick up the slack and messes I left them with when I took off. Sometimes I felt guilty about leaving them like that, to scramble to pick up the pieces and to adjust to life without me (which was definitely harder on Adam and Elena; I watched them grow up for eleven years and I had been a constant presence in their lives. That is, until I turned eighteen and quite literally abandoned them with, admittedly little thought about how it would impact them), but I just cared that I was away from Dad and his rules, his expectations of me as a hunter, and even as a protector to Adam and Elena.

Still, though, I didn't respond. I didn't want to make him angrier and start (potentially) hurling hurtful words at him or hear him dig into me; he wasn't Dad, right? Besides, I didn't _want_ to fight with him. Not now, not with everything going on, not with what happened with Jessica. I didn't have the mental or emotional energies to do so. Thick, heavy silence fell over the three of us, the Foreigner's song being the only buffer, distraction, whatever; the only thing that provided a minuscule amount of relief from my swirling thoughts.

* * *

The Impala was parked next to a sign that said "RANGER STATION Lost Creek Trail, Lost Creek National Forest".

"So Blackwater Ridge is pretty remote." I spoke up. I was looking at a 3D map of the national forest, paying particular attention to the ridge labeled "BLACKWATER RIDGE". Dad's coordinates were seared into my brain and stuck out at me for some reason, even though we were already. Dean and Adam were looking at the decorations. "It's cut off by these canyons here, rough terrain, dense forest, abandoned silver and gold mines all over the place." I listed.

"Dude, check out the size of this freaking bear." Adam said.

I looked over. My brothers were looking at a framed photo of a man standing behind a much larger bear. I stood next to Dean, Adam on the other side of him.

"And a dozen or more grizzlies in the area. It's no nature hike, that's for sure." I finished.

Someone walked up behind us. "You boys aren't planning on going out near Blackwater Ridge by any chance?" The voice asked. Adam, Dean and I whipped around, startled. It was a forest ranger, in full uniform. He peered curiously at us, and when his eyes met mine, I spoke up.

"Oh, no, sir," I lied smoothly, "we're environmental study majors from UC Boulder, just working on a paper." I laughed a little. Dean grinned and rose his fist.

"Recycle, man."

I knew Adam was internally rolling his eyes at Dean's antics even as there was a smile plastered on his face.

Yep. That's our brother, alright.

"Bull." The ranger said.

My eyes flicked to Dean, who didn't move. Adam shifted his weight from one leg to the other, sliding his hands into his pockets, remaining casual.

"You're friends with that Haley girl, right?"

I could almost see Dean considering his options. "Yes." He said too quickly, and I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Leave it to him to answer way too quickly when there's a potential hook up with a girl involved. "Yes, we are, Ranger—" He checked the Ranger nametag. "Wilkinson."

"Well I will tell you exactly what we told her. Her brother, Tommy Collins, filled out a backcountry permit saying he wouldn't be back from Blackwater until the twenty-fourth, so it's not exactly a missing persons now, is it?"

Adam shook his head. "No sir, it's not."

"You tell that girl to quit worrying," he told us, "I'm sure her brother's just fine."

I doubted it. If Dad sent us here for a reason, her brother was probably dead somewhere.

"We will." Dean said. "Well that Haley girl's quite a pistol, huh?"

"That is putting it mildly." The ranger mused.

"Actually," Adam jumped in, "you know what would help is if I could show her a copy of that backcountry permit. You know, so she could see her brother's return date."

The ranger eyed Adam, and he rose his eyebrows at the man. After a moment, the ranger nodded.

"Okay, I'll go get you one right now. Stay here, please." He said, then went to go get the permit to copy it in the back room.

* * *

We exited the ranger station. Dean was holding the permit in both hands and laughing as he scanned it.

"What, are you cruising for a hookup or something?" I asked.

He stopped laughing, but there was still a small smile on his face. "What do you mean?"

"The coordinates point to Blackwater Ridge, so what are we waiting for? Let's just go find Dad. I mean, why even talk to this girl?" It was just distracting us from the real reason we were here in the first place. This hunt was a distraction.

Dean and I stopped on opposite sides of the Impala while Adam opened the door to the backseat and shut the door.

"I don't know, maybe we should know what we're walking into before we actually walk into it?" Dean stared at me.

I paused. He had a point.

"What?" I asked when he kept staring at me.

"Since when are you all shoot first ask questions later, anyway?"

"Since now." I said, already annoyed that we weren't on the road as quickly as we could have been. Why did we have to stop and talk? We had to go find Dad.

"That's my gig. And Lis's gig. And Dad's and Adam's, too, depending on the case and what we're dealing with. But not you."

I ignored him, turning and walking towards the Impala, getting inside. I caught Adam's blue eyes looking right at me in the mirror. Neither of us said anything, but I knew from the expression on his face that he wanted to say something about my attitude I've had lately with them. But he didn't.

"Really?" Dean asked the empty air, then I heard his footsteps going around the car. He got in, fired up the engine, Def Leppard's Pyromania blasted from the radio and I cringed slightly. We started the drive towards the Collins' home.

We drove in silence for a few miles when I turned to look at Adam, who was staring worriedly at his phone, which was closed and resting on his lap in his hands.

"Guys, something's wrong." I made a face. That was never a good sign. Adam was usually correct when it came to things like that. "The girls haven't called in a while."

"I'm sure they're just wrapped up in that case you mentioned." Dean assured. "What are they hunting?"

"Lis didn't say anything about it."

Dean scowled, and I opened my mouth to respond, but Adam quickly said: "She just said they're heading there for a case. No mention of what they were going to kill."

"Well… that's disconcerting." Dean mumbled.

"And weird." I added, leaning my head against the headrest. I took the paper from Dean, which was laying across his lap. "But we should get back to _our_ case, don't you think?"

"Wow, Sam." Dean bit out. "You're not concerned about our best friends?"

I shook my head, but not for the reason he was probably expecting. Quickly, I said: "No, I am, but it's like Adam told me, they can handle themselves."

Adam hummed. "Finally, you're in agreement with me."

"I never wasn't." I responded, to which he snorted at.

We drove onwards.

* * *

Hours after we got situated in town and did some research on the town, it was nearly 6 PM when we finally got into the car and drove to the Collins' home. We checked in on the girls three separate times (Adam made us sit there and call them twice), but like I expected, they didn't pick up. So, we left three voicemails for the girls to check up on them and gave them updates on the case.

The Impala rolled up to a home in an upscale middle-class neighborhood. We parked and got out. Adam looked around at the three-story houses (most, I assumed, had basements too) and whistled quietly.

"Nice." Was the only thing he said.

Dean snorted. "I bet you'd like to live in one of these fancy houses, Adam."

"Better than living in the Impala and sleeping in shitty motels." He countered.

I flinched. I had often imagined my life with Jess in a house like the ones we were currently staring at. Two cars, a pet, a few kids, even.

Normal. Safe.

Away from death, harm and destruction.

The engagement ring, nestled in its black box, seemed to burn a hole in my back pocket. I hadn't shown it to anyone yet. I didn't want to.

We walked up the pathway and up to the front door. I knocked a couple times then stepped away from it, getting closer to my brothers rather than standing directly in front of the door. The door opened to reveal Haley Collins, a Caucasian woman in her early twenties with long brown hair and dark brown eyes. She stood behind the screen door and look like she wanted to open it. Not that I blamed her. Three strange men appearing on your doorstep

"You must be Haley Collins." I'm Dean," he then pointed to my brother and then to me, "this is Adam, and this is Sam, we're, ah, we're rangers with the Park Service. Ranger Wilkinson sent us over. He wanted us to ask a few questions about your brother Tommy."

She hesitated. "Lemme see some ID."

Dean pulled out a fake ID with the name 'Samuel Cole' and held it up against the screen. Haley looked at it, then at my brother, who smiled. Haley opened the door.

"Come on in."

"Thanks." Adam said.

She frowned. "Um, are you also a ranger? Because you look a little young to be." The excuse Elena used in Jericho wouldn't work now. I wondered what he would come up with on the fly.

Adam glanced at Dean and I, and I scratched the back of my head then shook my head back and forth slightly, hoping he'd get what I meant; no. He shook his head.

"Nah, my Dad's out of town on a business trip with his buddy," he motioned to Dean and I, "so his buddy's sons are looking after me."

Smart thinking, kid. She bought it. "Okay." That was that, luckily.

The door swung open; Haley caught sight of the Impala. "That yours?" She addressed to Dean.

"Yeah."

I looked back at the Impala then turned back around.

"Nice car." She complimented. I could tell that made him feel proud of how well he and Dad have taken care of her.

Haley turned to lead Dean and Sam into the kitchen, where a younger male, was sitting at the table on a laptop. Dean turned around and mouthed "she's awesome" to Adam and me, and we looked at each other and chuckled quietly.

Oh Dean, never change.

"So if Tommy's not due back for a while," I said, "how do you know something's wrong?"

Haley came back into the room with a bowl that she placed on the table.

"He checks in every day by cell. He emails, photos, stupid little videos— we haven't heard anything in over three days now."

"Well, maybe he can't get cell reception." Adam said.

"He's got a satellite phone, too. Ben, dinner's going to be ready in a few seconds. I want you to eat all of it."

"Oh." He mumbled, then pursed his lips, deep in thought.

"Could it be he's just having fun and forgot to check in?" Dean asked.

Ben glanced up sharply at him. "He wouldn't do that." He said, his tone a little cold.

Dean eyed Ben and he looked away. Haley put more food on the table.

"Our parents are gone. It's just my two brothers and me. We all keep pretty close tabs on each other." She said.

I sort of knew what that was like. What I mean by "sort of" is my case is different. That's because I left them and dropped all contact with my family and the girls for four years. I hadn't kept "pretty close tabs" on them, and if what Dean told me about Adam and Elena about the nightmares and panic attacks are true, then… I pushed the thought out of my head. To make sure it didn't come back, I focused on the task at hand. I couldn't have guilt eat me alive while working. I had to keep focused, otherwise I would drown. "Can I see the pictures he sent you?"

"Yeah." She said, then went into the other room to get her laptop. Ben typed something on his own laptop and looked up at his sister when she returned. She set the laptop down and opened it up, going into a folder so we could see the pictures I had asked for.

"That's Tommy." Haley said, then clicked twice and another picture comes up, then the still frame opening the latest video.

"Hey Haley," Tommy said, "day six, we're still out near Blackwater Ridge. We're fine, keeping safe, so don't worry, okay? Talk to you tomorrow."

I spotted a shadow moving rapidly past the tent. Adam gently tapped my shoulder and subtly motioned towards the computer, signaling he saw it, too. I nodded ever-so-slightly. That thing can move, that's for damn sure.

"Well, we'll find your brother. We're heading out to Blackwater Ridge first thing." Dean said.

"Then maybe I'll see you there." At my inquisitive look, she elaborated. "Look, I can't sit around here anymore. So I hired a guy. I'm heading out in the morning, and I'm gonna find Tommy myself."

"I think I know how you feel." Dean said quietly. Yeah. I'm in the same boat.

"Hey, do you mind forwarding these to me?" I asked her.

"Sure." She said, then looked at her computer to do just that.

After she told me she forwarded them to me, we quickly said our goodbyes, but Adam, nor Dean, nor I mentioned to her that we would keep in touch with them; I had a feeling that we wouldn't until the case was wrapping up, unless we went on the search with her and the guy she hired to find her brother tomorrow. I had a feeling that we were going to join them, whether they approved of it or not. I mean, Dad could be there.

Dean kept giving Haley flirty eyes the entire time we were at the house (Haley, who had noticed that Adam kept looking longingly at the plates of uneaten food on the kitchen counter, but didn't say anything about the fact that he was starving – we hadn't stopped for breakfast earlier and skipped lunch – gave the poor kid a couple platefuls of homemade food in plastic Tupperware containers). Honestly, it was annoying me.

Flirting on the job wasn't professional. At all.

I swore if Adam kept rolling his eyes at Dean's attempt to – creepily – flirt with his eyes when she wasn't looking in his general direction, they would eventually roll up into the back of his head and become stuck like that permanently. Three Tupperware containers full of homemade food and a subtle rejection later, we exited the Collins home. Adam looked happy with the fact he was holding so much food – and it didn't come from a two-star diner in a random town I guaranteed that we would never visit again, or a take-out bag. I haven't seen that kid so happy since he was five and Aubrey had gotten him the toy stuffed animal he had had his eye on for a week. He saw it in a grocery store while we were heading towards the soup aisle in a big white box. It was always a little awkward shopping with Dad because he was usually grumpy. But it was horrendous when we were all young. Dad refused to get the stuffed animal for Adam, and he nearly had a huge meltdown in the middle of the aisle while Dad was paying. But, thankfully, we managed to calm him down before he could.

A day later, while Dad was out interviewing witnesses for a case I don't remember all that much, Aubrey snuck out of the motel and walked eight blocks to the store, and twenty minutes later she was back with the stuffed animal. It even had a stereotypically red Christmas present bow pinned onto its left hand, and it wasn't December at that time. I still have no idea how she got the bear for him. She hadn't told me then when I asked her, and she still wasn't spilling the beans.

"You're strangely happy, little brother." Den commented as he unlocked the Impala. Adam balanced the food in between his knee and chin, supporting the containers with his dominate hand so they didn't fall out of his grip and clatter to the ground. He opened the car door and set the containers down on the middle seat.

"I have an ass load of fresh, homemade food, the gang's all back together, we even have Dad's journal, and we know he's alive, that he hasn't been torn to bits by some monster. Of course, I'm happy. It's a win-win-win-win." He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Dean and I looked at each other and shared a small smile. In all honesty I was just happy Adam was happy.

"Man, are you going to eat all of that?" Dean asked, looking at Adam in the review mirror, his eyebrow arched.

My little brother looked down at the food and then looked Dean, then at me, then at Dean again. "You bet your ass I am." He said, grinning smugly. What a little shit.

"Damn." Dean muttered good-naturedly. I rolled my eyes, chuckling quietly.

The Impala made its way out of the upscale neighborhood and the three of us drove on into the twilight.

* * *

Two hours after we left the Collins' residence, Adam, Dean and I were sitting down at a table at a random restaurant-and-bar Dean had nearly driven past. It smelled like all bars did. Cigarettes, stale peanuts, booze, the whole nine yards. Our _original_ goal was to head back to the motel we had been renting so we could do some more research and look over the video again in silence, but after Dean had begged Adam to let him have some of the food Haley packed up for him and Adam told him to fuck off; he wasn't having any of _his_ food Haley had specifically gave to him, Dean made a spilt second decision to swing into this establishment's parking lot. Adam had left the food in the car but had ordered French fries and put an ass-load of salt on them, much to my disgust and Dean's delight. I will never understand the eating habits of my brothers.

"So, Blackwater Ridge doesn't get a lot of traffic." I said. "Local campers, mostly. But still, this past April, two hikers went missing out there. They were never found." I opened up Dad's journal and scanned the pages.

"Any before that?" Adam asked, then popped a fry into his mouth. I pulled out the news articles and showed them.

"Yeah, in 1982, eight different people all vanished in the same year. Authorities said it was a grizzly attack."

Dean quickly read the headline in The Lost Creek Gazette, and I reread it.

'GRIZZLY BEAR ATTACKS!

UP TO EIGHT HIKERS VANISH IN LOST CREEK AREA

HIKERS DISAPPEARANCE BAFFLE AUTHORITIES'

Families continue search and rescue efforts in spite of disappointing [...]" I stopped reading to pull out my laptop. Besides, I had already read it.

"And again in 1959 and again before that in 1936." I opened the laptop, which already had the video of Tom up.

"Every twenty-three years, just like clockwork. Okay. Watch this. Here's a clincher. I downloaded that guy Tommy's video to the laptop." I angled the laptop towards them. "Check this out." Adam and Dean leaned forward to get a closer look. I went through the videos' frames one at a time. A shadow crossed the screen. "I noticed it back at the house. Adam, did you see it too?"

"Yeah."

"Do it again." Dean said.

I did as he asked – the shadow flashed across the screen. "That's three frames. That's a fraction of a second. Whatever that thing is, it can move."

All the sudden, Dean hit my shoulder. I looked up and over at him.

"Told you something weird was going on."

"Yeah." I closed my laptop. Dean attempted to swipe a fry from Adam's plate, but he smacked his hand away.

"Quit trying to steal my fries like you do every single time I order them. Get your own damn fries, fucker." He snapped.

"Fuck _you_." Dean retorted.

"Guys," I said quickly, not wanting them to get distracted with their pointless bickering over a couple of greasy, salty deep-fried potatoes, "I got one more thing." I handed a newspaper article to Dean, and Adam leaned over to read it, too. "In 'fifty-nine one camper survived this supposed grizzly attack. Just a kid. Barely crawled out of the woods alive."

Dean looked at The Lost Creek Gazette. "Is there a name?"

"Yeah. Name's Jim Shaw."

He pursed his lips. "Good enough for me. Why don't we hit the road after Adam finishes his fries, I finish-" he taps the beer glass in his hand with his pointer finger a couple times, "this puppy, and check our phones to see if the girls responded?"

Adam and I looked at each other, then nodded.

"Sure." He said and I just shrugged.

"Awesome." Dean grinned, gripping the glass tighter, then brought it up to his lips to knock back half of its contents.

* * *

 **A/N: Title is from Henry David** **Thoreau's _Walden_. T** **hank you for reading! I will be back with chapter five, "because I Wished to Live Deliberately" sometime in the future. I've just started a college class and am starting another one right after that one is finished (in a month), so I'll be busy.**

 **Anyway, how was this chapter? Good? Bad? Somewhere in between? Please let me know.**

 **I will (hopefully) see you soon, friends.**

 ***Bows and exits***

* * *

 **Word count:** **12,448.** **Last updated: N/A.**


	5. because I Wished to Live Deliberately

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize. I only own my OCs, original plots/canon divergences [aka: original writing] (technically? I think? idk please don't sue me), and whatever else you don't recognize.**

 **Enjoy the fifth chapter of TRLT!**

* * *

 **Chapter Five: because I Wished to Live Deliberately**

 **aka: WENDIGO (part two)**

 **Adam's POV**

* * *

When we were finished with our meals and drinks, we got back into the Impala and drove to the Shaw residence. When we pulled up to the location, I immediately noticed that it was a small trailer with no second floor, and it was kind of beaten down from the outside. Chipped, torn, and old siding, old, rusted metal roof shingles, dead overgrown grass, a suffocating amount of dirt, the works. Junk and crap like that littered the front lawn and it looked like it hadn't been touched in years. We got out of the car and walked up to the front door. Sam knocked on the door, an old man wearing sweatpants and a crummy old white t-shirt stretched over a large beer gut and matted hair, Mr. Shaw, answered the door. But, he didn't let us in. There was a screen door in between him and us, probably used to keep bugs out of his home. "Hi, rangers." His voice was gruff in a way that I recognized a smokers' voice usually is.

"Mr. Shaw?" Dean asked, and the man in question nodded, confirming his identity to us.

"Yeah. That's me. C'mon in, rangers." He said gruffly, then opened the screen door to let us in. We stepped inside, and I did my best to ignore the stench of body odor, beer, cigarettes, blood and something distinctly stale that immediately sucker-punched my sense of smell. Ugh. Sam and Dean didn't look too troubled by it.

"Sir, I would like to ask you about the attack that happened when you were a baby." Sam began.

He began talking to us while leading us inside his house, which seemed like it was suffocating me with how small, cramped and dark it was in there. And sweet Jesus, the concoction of gross smells became more and more putrid the further we got inside. What can I say? My claustrophobic acts up in small houses. And I've got a sharp sense of smell, too.

Shaw put a cigarette in his mouth. "Look, ranger," He addressed Sam around the cigarette, grabbing the lighter from a nearby round table, "I don't know why you're asking me about this. It's public record. I was a kid. My parents got mauled by a—"

"Grizzly?" Sam interrupted, shoving his hands into his pockets. I watched as Shaw lit up the smoke and cringed slightly when I saw the light of the fire, shifting uncomfortably. "That's what attacked them?"

Shaw took a puff of his cigarette, then nodded while taking it out of his mouth. He blew the disgusting smoke out of his mouth after a couple seconds of silence.

"The other people that went missing that year, those bear attacks too?" I asked. When I got silence as an answer, I pressed: "What about all the people that went missing this year? Same thing?" When there was still no answer, I switched my tone, saying firmly: "Sir, please. If we knew what we were dealing with, we might be able to stop it."

Ain't that the truth.

"I seriously doubt that." He said. "Anyways, I don't see what difference it would make." He mentioned as he sat down in a recliner. "You wouldn't believe me. Nobody ever did." I didn't blame them for not believing him; the supernatural world is chock full of crazy shit.

Sam sat down across from him; his face full of curiosity. "Mr. Shaw, what did you see?"

He paused, then said quietly: "Nothing. It moved too fast to see. It hid too well. I heard it, though. A roar. Like... no man or animal I ever heard."

"It came at night?" I asked, and he nodded. "Got inside your tent?"

"It got inside our _cabin_ , son." My brows shot up at that bit of information. "I was sleeping in front of the fireplace when it came in. It didn't smash a window or break the door. It unlocked it. Do you know of a bear that could do something like that?" Nope, never heard of a _bear_ doing that. An unnatural creature, though, could probably very easily swing something like that. "I didn't even wake up till I heard my parents screaming."

"It killed them?" Sam asked. I exchanged a glance with Dean. To Dean, I mouthed: "Humanoid creature?" And he grimaced, lifting one shoulder up in a shrug.

Grimly, he said while shaking his head, "Dragged them off into the night. Why it left me alive... been asking myself that ever since."

There was another pause as Shaw momentarily got lost in his own thoughts, and I tracked his hands as they moved up to the collar of his shirt. "Did leave me this, though."

He opened his collar to reveal three long claw-like mark scars extending from his left collarbone to his left shoulder. Sam, Dean and I inspected them carefully. Dean's face was set in a grimace, and when Sam turned to look at me, I could just barely see that his lips were set in a hard, thin line.

 _Fantastic._ I thought.

"There's something evil in those woods." The man said, bringing my attention back to him. "It was some sort of a demon."

* * *

Dean, Sam and I walked the length of the motel's corridor with identical looking rooms on either side.

"Spirits and demons don't have to unlock doors. If they want inside, they just go through the walls." Dean commented.

"So it's probably something else, something corporeal." Sam said, looking at the room numbers so we could find the room we had nabbed for the night; I had a sleeping bag and foam pad secured underneath my arms – the pillows and extra blankets were still in the trunk.

I mouthed _corporeal_ to myself. "Corporeal? Excuse me, professor." I snarked.

"Shut up, Adam." Before I could snap something back because a) he's being a dick, and b) I'm a Winchester; snapping at each other whenever one of us snarks at the other is kind of our thing – or at least one of the things we do that has established this "quirky" dynamic between the three of us – he quickly made a statement. Damn it, I had a response all lined up and everything. "So, what do you guys think?" He looked between us.

"The claws, the speed that it moves... could be a Skinwalker, maybe a black dog." Dean answered, and I could almost hear him sifting through his brain, trying to come up with what the thing that sped past Tommy's tent and tore up Mr. Shaw's body – not to mention broke into a cabin and murdered two adults – could be. It's crazy how in-sync we all are. But nobody on the planet could be more in-sync than Lis and Bree have always been and are currently. Seriously. "Whatever we're talking about, we're talking about a creature, and it's corporeal." He mocked the use of Sam using an "advanced" vocabulary word. "Which means we can kill it."

"If it bleeds, you can kill it." I recited. Sam bit his lip, and I could tell his mind was swirling with theories.

Dad had said those exact words to me, to us, growing up. They'd been said repeatedly and so much so that I could recite them in my sleep, but the first time I could remember them was when I was five or six. _If it bleeds, you can kill it._

That was good enough for me.

* * *

Having bags full of weapons at our sides while checking in wasn't exactly a good idea, so we had to get a room and then head back to the car. Carrying the weapons while checking in didn't help us stay anonymous/forgettable, and the last thing we needed was for the motel clerk to call the cops on us for the ass-load of weapons and trinkets we brought with us. Obviously, getting arrested now would be extremely bad for a multitude of reasons.

Dean opened the trunk of the Impala, threw me the extra blankets and pillows which I fumbled to catch, but did, then the weapons box, propping the top of the box open with a shotgun. He put some guns in a duffel bag. Sam leaned into the weapons box, and I leaned against the Impala's doors, crossing my arms over my chest, watching my brothers movements as they began to collect weapons.

"We cannot let that Haley girl go out there." Sam said.

"Oh yeah? What are we gonna tell her? That she can't go into the woods because of a big scary monster?" I asked, sarcasm dripping from my tone.

"Yeah."

Dean stopped grabbing weapons and looked at Sam, his eyebrows shooting up into his hairline, possibly at the combination of Sam being a fucking idiot by letting a normal girl in on the deep dark secrets of the paranormal and the douchebag attitude he's had with us lately. "Her brother's _missing_ , Sam. She's not gonna just sit this out. Now we go with her, we protect her, and we keep our eyes peeled for our fuzzy predator friend." After handing me a knife and a gun, Dean zipped up the duffel bag and picked it up.

"Finding Dad's not enough?" Sam asked angrily. He grabbed the shotgun then put it back where it had been originally. He slammed the weapons box shut, then the trunk. "Now we gotta babysit too? Shouldn't we be with the girls…" he started, then grumbled under his breath: "Or, wait a second, fuck that. Shouldn't _they_ be with _us_ , finding Dad, like they had originally been doing before they veered off course?"

Dean and I stared at him. I rolled my shoulders, inspecting his face. Yep. His misdirected anger at the girls was an indication that he was in the middle of the anger stage of grieving, probably full force.

"What?" He demanded coldly.

"Nothing." Dean responded in a tone that was nearly as frosty as Sam's. He threw the duffel bag at Sam, who caught it with a quiet grunt. Sam spun around on his heel and stormed into the motel room. Dean looked at me then stared at our brothers' retreating figure. When Sam slammed the door shut, Dean whistled in awe, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"Holy fuck." He commented, twisting around to look at me. "Sammy's on his friggin period."

I immediately picked up on the fact that he was attempting to be funny to either diffuse the tension in the air, or to make me crack a smile. Maybe it was both. I sighed heavily, unamused by the attempt. "He's in the anger stage of grieving, Dean."

His smirk dropped from his face. "I know." He muttered. "I just wish he'd stop dragging the girls through the mud when they aren't even here to defend themselves. Lis would have half a mind to knock some sense into him for doing that."

I didn't doubt that she wouldn't for a second. "Give him time. Maybe a lot of it. He'll come around eventually."

"I know."

I didn't respond. Instead, I walked towards the room, Dean's presence a comfort to me as he walked after me. As soon as I got into the room, I dropped the blankets and pillows I had been holding and flopped down onto my sleeping bag. Sam and Dean were sitting on their respective beds. Sam was on his computer and Dean was toying with his silver ring, mainly twisting it around his finger and tapping it with his fingernails. Lis had gotten him the ring for his twentieth birthday, and I swear he hasn't taken it off since he first slipped it on his finger.

I dug the heel of my palm into my eye to rub it because it was itchy, smacking my lips together a couple times before letting out a big yawn.

"Tired, old man?" Dean quipped. I flipped him the bird. "I swear, you sleep more than the dead do."

"I'm a growing friggin boy. What were you two like when you were fifteen?"

"I was awesome and a badass. Sam was a nerdy, goofy, awkward and lanky kid. He just grew from a tyke to a man-child since we saw him last. But he's still the same old Sam. Just… bigger."

Sam scoffed. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

He snapped back automatically, "I don't know."

I rolled my eyes, shaking my head slightly at my brothers. My brothers were simultaneously bickering trivially and looking at the case and doing whatever, which meant that they were totally ignoring me (which I was cool with). I quickly made my "bed" – which just consisted of getting the sleeping bag and pillows in place on top of the foam pad, then I stripped off my layers until I was only in my white t-shirt and boxers.

I stared up at the ceiling, which was painted white. I thought about the case some more, tossing and turning as much as the sleeping bag would allow. When my mind wouldn't shut up, though, I reached over and pulled my phone out of my discarded jeans. I flipped it open, becoming disappointed when I saw no responses from the girls. Not even a voicemail. Now I was getting worried about them. I prayed they were okay, just busy, and not torn to bloody pieces somewhere in a ditch.

Disturbed by the thought of my best (and only) friends dying, I dropped my phone next to my sleeping bag and propped my head up on my arm, which was resting on my pillow. I tried to count to ten to calm myself down, tried to come up with logical reasons why they weren't answering their phones, but it didn't work. I just became more worried about their wellbeing by the tenfold.

 _I'm just going through some separation anxiety. It's normal._ I thought to myself. I knew that it was true, but it sucked. I also think I have some PTSD because of Sam leaving us and dropping all contact with us for four years. And I also had a massive grudge.

"Adam," Sam said, and I looked over at my brother. Dean and he were looking at each other knowingly. "We can practically _hear_ you thinking and stressing out about the girls' wellbeing."

"They've never taken this long to respond. They haven't even sent a text." I said, taking my rosary out from underneath my shirt and fiddling with it. I had a feeling that fiddling with the rosary would become a habit of mine; something to keep my hands busy while my thoughts raced at breakneck speeds.

"Little brother-" Dean began, but I held up my hand to silence him. I sat up so I could look at them better.

"I know what you're going to say. "They're probably just busy", right?" When he didn't deny it, I pushed forward. "I just… you know, I'm anxious. This radio silence isn't sitting well with me. Like, at all. Ever since Stanford," I pointed at Sam, "left, I-I've got separation anxiety. That's what I'm going through right now. And before you two numbskulls begin to worry about me, I'm fine. This won't affect my ability to hunt whatever it is we're going to find and kill, bring that guy back home to his family. I'm still an awesome hunter."

"That's… we're not worried about your ability to hunt, man." Dean said, his tone surprisingly gentle. "We're worried about _you_." He emphasized. I didn't respond. I leaned back down, resting my head onto my pillow and biting my lower lip in thought. My thoughts were racing.

"The reason you're this worried about them is because you care about them. A lot. That's obvious to me. Dean, too." Sam reasoned, and I hummed at the statement, because yes, I do care about them a lot. Dean hummed quietly in agreement. I nodded even though they didn't bother to look away from their activities to see me. "In fact, I'd be more concerned about you if you _weren't_ anxious about their wellbeing or being away from them for that long. Dean said you and Elena had nightmares about me getting hurt and were both extremely anxious about my wellbeing while I was away at Stanford, right?"

I was surprised he brought that up, given how painful and fresh that entire situation was. I mean, his girlfriend died there not even two weeks ago. "Yeah. That's correct." Where was he going with this?

"They've been by your side since you were a baby, right?"

"Yeah."

"That, I don't know, must mean you're, uh…" he paused, "conditioned."

Dean looked over at Sam, still fiddling with his ring. "Conditioned?" He echoed.

Sam shrugged. "Yeah."

I didn't know what he meant by that. "What do you mean?"

"Maybe you're so used to them being with you all the time that you feel weird when you're separated. Like, empty or not right or something."

Maybe. "I'll be okay once they respond, that I know they're okay." I looked at my brothers, who I noticed looked at each other before nodding.

"They _are_ okay." Sam said gently. "Nothing will ever get past those Drake sisters. They're awesome, smart and all around badasses. They're totally fine."

I relaxed, feeling better already about the girls. Slowly but sure, my paranoia ebbed away. And thank God it did. I didn't need to be worrying about my friends while on a case. Being wrapped up in thinking about the Alyssa, Aubrey and Elena's wellbeings' wouldn't help us help Haley and Ben find Tommy faster.

"Adam, get some sleep." Dean suggested. I heard the bedsprings creak slightly underneath his weight as he sat up, looking at me. "If we're going to be hiking through the woods, I don't think you being up until, like, three AM would help." He gently pushed on my hip with his sock-clad foot.

For once, I didn't argue. "Fine, fine." I closed my eyes with a soft sigh, getting as comfortable as I could on the foam pad.

Sleep overtook me pretty quickly.

* * *

 **Date: November 11th, 2005**

* * *

The next morning, the Impala pulled up to the forest's entrance. Haley, Ben - who was holding a shotgun - and an older man stared at us. I saw Haley shaking her head slightly. Sam and Dean get out of the car in unison, while I sat up straighter, stretched my arms out vertically. I sighed when I heard my joints pop. After stretching my arms, I grabbed my phone from the seat. I shoved my phone, which I had a feeling would be absolutely useless in the middle of freaking nowhere, into the glove box on top of another phone (one of Dad's), quickly slamming the compartment closed. Sam opened the back door of the Impala and pulled out the duffel bag. I got out of the car, slamming the door and making my way to the back of the trunk. I wanted to inspect the weapons one more time to make sure we had everything to take Smokey the Bear or his less-than-snuggly friends down. After grabbing a few flashlights and slipping extra batteries into the backpack I packed last night and remembered to bring with me on Dean's rush out the door, I shut the trunk and stood next to Dean.

"You guys got room for three more?" My brother asked, and I kept one hand wrapped around the strap of my backpack, the other shoved into the front pocket of my jeans.

"Wait, you want to come with us?" Haley demanded; her tone incredulous.

"Who are these guys?" The man asked.

"Apparently this is all the park service could muster up for the search and rescue, Roy."

Sam ignored them, heading past everyone.

"You're rangers?" The man, Roy, eyed me suspiciously. I held his gaze unflinchingly. If he thought I would be intimidated by him, he had another thing coming.

"That's right."

"And you're hiking out in biker boots and jeans?" Haley asked. "Not to mention, you're bringing him," she gestured to me, "with you?"

Dean looked down at himself. "Well, sweetheart, I don't do shorts. And I can't exactly leave a fifteen-year-old kid," he jerked his thumb at me. I resisted the urge to flip him off by tightening my hand on the strap of my backpack and drumming my fingers against my thigh, "alone with no supervision, now can I? Besides, he knows how to work weapons, don't you, man?" He looked pleased when I nodded.

Dean headed past Haley before she could respond, and I heard her huff under her breath.

"What, you think this is funny?" Roy demanded. "It's dangerous back country out there. Her brother might be hurt." He pointed at me with the – cocked/the safety still on, thankfully – shotgun he had. I kept my face passive even as he motioned to me with a gun that had actual, live bullets in it. From behind Roy, I saw Dean step forward protectively. Even at the slightest hint of danger towards me, he would move quickly – probably just as fast as the thing moved on the film; three frames, half a second. He didn't turn around as he said to my brothers: "You bringing some teenybopper along in these dangerous woods doesn't exactly scream 'taking care of him' like a responsible adult, either. What kinda ranger does that, anyway?"

That got Sam's attention. He whirled back around, his shoulders stiffening. Bad move by Hired Dick, by the looks of it. Sam's been pissed off for the past few days because of what happened at Stanford and insulting me when he's had this short of a fuse lately was a one-way ticket to getting chewed out by Angry Bitchface McGee.

"Believe me, I know how dangerous it can be." Dean said calmly, but I could hear the underlying annoyance in his tone when the smug asshole implied that Dean, who essentially raised me, Sam and Elena, wasn't "taking care of me" by bringing me out here to hunt Smokey the Bear in the middle of the forest, where someone's gone missing - and is probably already dead by now. But I couldn't legally be left alone for too long. Besides, I wanted to do some more hunting with both my big brothers. Now that Sam's back in the fold, I… well, I missed him. It was nice having him back, even under the less than desirable circumstances.

I could already tell that I was going to loathe breathing the same air as this douche-wheel.

Trust me when I say that monsters, I get. Humans on the other hand are just bags of dicks.

"We just wanna help them find their brother, that's all." Dean added, sounding about an octave away from blowing a gasket, "And don't tell me how to take care of my br-" he quickly stopped himself from saying "brother", "-friend, I practically raised his skinny ass all by myself."

I completely ignored the "skinny ass" part. But it was true. He did raise me. And Sam, and Lis, and Bree, and Elena.

Without waiting for a response from the man, probably in order to pick a fight with a douche-wheel, Dean headed past them. I followed after my brothers, a twig snapping underneath my foot. Now I was really thankful I had my hiking shoes on my feet instead of my regular shoes. I heard Haley hum. Ben mumbled something I couldn't hear underneath his breath to her. She chuckled quietly, muttering a word that sounded like "yeah", but it was so quiet that I could barely hear her. Not to mention the fact that I wasn't tuning into their conversation. Whatever. It's of no concern to me.

Our group headed into the thick, dense and lush forest. As I looked up at the sky – or tried to – I thought the girls, who were still in Montrose. I hoped they were okay.

Our band of merry pals trekked through the forest, Roy in the lead, then Dean, Ben, me, Haley Sam bringing up the rear.

"Roy, you said you did a little hunting." Dean mentioned.

"Yeah, more than a little."

"Uh-huh." He didn't sound impressed. Not that I expected he would. "What kind of furry critters do you hunt?" He asked.

"Mostly buck, sometimes bear." He sounded a little proud of himself. Smug asshole.

Sam looked back at me and mouthed: "Prick." I snickered, then quickly covered my mouth with my hand.

My eldest brother passed Roy. "Tell me, uh, Bambi or Yogi ever hunt you back?"

Roy suddenly grabbed Dean by the back of his shirt and yanked him back. I tensed, expecting a fight to break out between my smartass of a brother and Ranger Prick.

"Whatcha doing, Roy?" I asked, struggling to keep my voice neutral.

Roy grabbed a stick and poked something Dean had almost stepped on, and I sighed heavily when I heard the unmistakable sound of metal squeaking and chomping down onto the stick; a bear trap, by the sounds of it. I don't even have to look at the only chick in our group to sense that she was annoyed. I could almost sense it.

"You should watch where you're stepping. Ranger." He snarked. Man, did I want to slug him. He threw the stick back into the woods, carefully stepped around the trap, and retook the lead.

Dean chuckled, saying the obvious to us to try and save face: "It's a bear trap." Which didn't work. Not in the slightest.

My brother's an idiot.

"Thank you for informing us, dude." I said sarcastically, shaking my head at his idiocy. He grinned brazenly.

We kept walking.

I pulled the rosary from around my neck and fiddled with it, carefully running my fingers over the beads. Sam walked up next to me, inspecting the necklace.

"You still have that?" He sounded surprised.

"Yep. Why do you sound so shocked?"

"Because I didn't exactly take you for the necklace-wearing type. Even if it is a rosary."

I scowled. "Why?"

"Dude, when you were five, you said that necklaces were dumb and that you wouldn't wear them for as long as you lived. Rosary's count as necklaces, don't they?"

"I don't know if you've noticed, Sam, but I was a dumbass five-year-old, and that was ten years ago."

There was a pause. "Right." Sam muttered. "But why did you decide to wear one now?"

I shrugged, not really knowing the answer to that question myself. Truthfully, I didn't know what compelled me to take it in the first place. I just… decided to. But all I knew is that I didn't want to let it go or lose it.

He took a shot in the dark. "Is it to feel closer to Dad, because he had it with him at the motel room?"

I laughed, but there was no humor in it. That shot was _really_ in the dark. "No, man, that's not why I took the rosary." Definitely not.

The youngest Collins' kid looked at us, curious. "What's a, uh, rosary?"

I looked over at him. "A rosary is a set of prayer beads used by Roman Catholics to facilitate meditation and prayer." I responded, then stopped walking. The other stopped as well, and so did Sam. I took off the necklace so the teen in question could get a closer look at it. "Devotion to the rosary is one of the most notable features of popular Catholic spirituality. Pope John Paul II placed the rosary at the very center of Christian spirituality and called it "among the finest and most praiseworthy traditions of Christian contemplation."" I quoted from memory, referencing the quote from a passage I read in some article, on a computer in some small town's library I couldn't remember the name of. Honestly I didn't care to think that hard about it. I took a deep breath then continued, "Catholics believe the rosary is a remedy against severe trials, temptations and the hardships of life, and that the rosary is one of the great weapons given to believers in their battle against every evil, from protecting them from evil to keeping evil away."

A ton of hunters we've worked with in the past have always had a rosary with them for that very reason. In addition to protection, it is also used by hunters as a key item in blessing water to fend off demons. It only serves those two purposes, though. Protection and creating holy water.

The other boy looked at me. "You sound like a history professor." He said quietly. My lips tugged upwards into a half-smirk. Imagine if I was. "Are you Catholic?" When I shook my head, his brows drew together, lips twisting into a slight pout. "Then… uh, why are you wearing it?"

"Personal reasons." I said vaguely, making sure to keep my voice void of emotion in case he thought about trying to get a clearer answer out of me. I didn't feel like elaborating either. Mainly because I didn't know why I took it in the first place.

"Oh. R-right." He said, then turned back around, moving forward. Which left Sam and I in his wake. He picked up our conversation before Ben cut in. He pointed at the rosary, and I fingered the beads, absentmindedly tapping the fingertip of my pointer finger against the dark bead.

""Personal reasons"?" Sam echoed, his eyes searching my face intensely before flickering down to the necklace. He looked back to me, quirking a brow. "What reasons would those be?"

Okay, now I was fed up with him pressing a matter that didn't need to be pressed so much. Why couldn't he just leave it alone, _especially_ because I don't know why I decided to grab it in the first place? I kept my voice low as I snapped: "Christ, Sam, I just felt like grabbing the freaking thing. Dad didn't take it on his way out after quite literally abandoning the case he was working, so I took it. And if you're worried about the fact that I stole it from the room, it's not technically stealing if he abandoned it entirely, right?" I stopped holding the rosary up, instead tucking it back underneath my shirt. The cool metal against my bare skin felt good.

He thought about my words for a moment, then shook his head. "No, guess not. Sorry for pushing."

I shrugged, relaxing. He was curious, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's not like he would steal it from my person while I was sleeping. "It's fine." I looked ahead and noticed that everyone else were ahead of us, moving along the pathway after Roy steadily. If we didn't catch up with them soon, that would be really bad. Especially considering the fact that we had no idea what kind of unnatural creature was out there in the woods, probably just lurking beyond our very limited, human senses, even with the hunter training/tracking Dad drilled into our brains.

Hey, you never know. I'd rather not take that chance.

Sam and I caught up with everybody else, just in time to see Haley catch up with Dean. "You didn't pack any provisions." She said, and that was true. "You guys are carrying a duffel bag and the one carrying a single backpack is a teenaged boy you two are supposed to be looking after for a friend. You're not rangers." She grabbed his arm. "So who the hell are you?"

Ben went past Haley and Dean. Sam looked at Dean, who indicated with his expression that Sam's good to go on by; Sam obeyed. Dean watched him go for a moment before glancing at me, motioning to me with a slight jerk of his head to head forward, too. I shook my head, wanting to stay with Dean. He didn't argue. Instead, he looked back towards the young woman.

"Sam, Adam and I are brothers, and we're looking for our father with three of our friends. Well, they're, uh, tangled up somewhere else and they couldn't come with us. He might be here, we don't know. I just figured that you and me, we're in the same boat."

"Why didn't you just tell me that from the start?" She asked.

"I'm telling you now. 'sides, it's probably the most honest I've ever been with a woman. ...Ever." I had to stop myself from smirking, knowing that it was kind of true. "So, we okay?"

There was a pause. I caught Dean looking at me from the corner of his eye, which I ignored.

"Yeah, okay." She said.

"And what do you mean I didn't pack provisions?" Dean asked, pulling out a big bag of peanut M&Ms. He raised his eyebrows at her before sticking his hand in the bag as he hiked on. Haley waited a moment, and I could almost hear the "oh my God" in her head. She followed after him. I scoffed slightly and rolled my eyes, catching up to my brother. I grabbed a handful of M&Ms and popped it into my mouth, chewing.

After I swallowed, I nudged his shoulder and asked, ""The most honest you've ever been with a woman"?" I repeated, doing a rather good imitation of his voice. "What about the girls?" He's been honest with them for most of his life about many, many, _many_ things.

"You think she'd have bought it if I said that I _had_ to be honest with them because our lives depend on it?" He ruffled my hair, and I pushed at his arm playfully.

I shook my head, knowing that he had a point. We caught up to the group, and Dean fell back behind Haley in order to bring up the rear. Having a civilian in the back of the formation while who knows what lurked around in the dark woods wasn't a smart idea.

Roy said, "This is it. Blackwater Ridge."

Sam headed past Roy. "What coordinates are we at?"

Roy pulled out a GPS and read aloud from the device: "Thirty-five and minus one-eleven."

Dean and I walked up to Sam and we listened. There wasn't any nature-esque sounds swirling around us, like there would have been, being this deep in the forest – anywhere. No sounds of brush and twigs underfoot from animals, no birdsong. It was eerily quiet.

"You hear that?" I asked.

"Yeah. Not even crickets." Sam mumbled.

"Awesome." Dean said tepidly.

"I'm gonna go take a look around." Roy announced suddenly, and I spun towards him instantly.

"You shouldn't go off by yourself." I warned. We wouldn't be able to protect him if he did. We should stick together as a group. He may be a macho asshole, but that didn't mean I didn't want him to get hurt. Or worse.

"That's sweet of you, boy." I narrowed my eyes at him. _Prick._ I thought once more. "Don't worry about me."

Roy motioned to his shotgun and pushed between Dean, Sam and I to retake the lead. I wondered how the hell someone who's been trained by professionals wouldn't have noted – or even payed enough attention to have noticed – the eerily dead silence that surrounded us.

That couldn't have been a good sign.

Dean turned back to us as Ben and Haley caught up.

"All right, everybody stays together." Dean said. "Let's go." I could tell he wasn't about to let the man out of his sightline anytime soon.

We moved forwards.

* * *

Sam, Dean, Ben, Haley and I were looking around near a large rock, trying to figure out where the thing went.

"Haley! Over here!" Roy shouted suddenly. My head snapped up, and I brushed dirt off my hands.

Haley immediately ran towards Roy's voice, followed closely by the rest of us. We came to a halt as we took in what was in front of us. My eyes widen slightly. It was the campsite. Or what was left of it.

"Oh my God." Haley breathed.

All three of the tents were torn open and bloody, all the supplies was scattered around, littering the forest floor. It didn't look good. I swallowed hard when I noticed that there was blood splattered on all of the tents, painted across the trees, staining the leaves red. A ball of dread weighed me down.

Shit.

"Looks like a grizzly." Roy said. I grimaced as I inspected one of the tents. There was no way that was just a freaking bear. The claw-marks on the tent were way too wide for it to be that. A werewolf could swing that. Maybe. If it was big and pissed enough. Or a wendigo.

Dean and Haley looked around, while Sam and I stuck close to Ben, who looked dismayed at the site of his brother's camp torn up, with no brother in sight.

"Tommy?" Haley called, taking off her backpack, dropping it into the ground. She began walking through the campsite. "Tommy!" She yelled when there was no response.

I stiffened, then quickly moved to catch up with her. "Haley." I warned, then hushed her urgently, glancing around at my surroundings quickly. "Shh."

She ignored me. "Tommy!"

"Shh-hh-hh!" I hissed, louder. This got her attention. She spun around and looked at me.

"Why?" She demanded.

"Something might still be out there."

"Adam!" Dean called, and I turned at the sound of my voice.

I went over to him, snapped a stick, and crouched next to him. Sam was standing on the other side, his arms crossed over his chest, eyes scanning the ground underneath his feet. I looked down at what he was looking. Drag marks from a _very_ human body.

Uh-oh.

"The bodies were dragged from the campsite." He said. "But here, the tracks just vanish."

"That's weird." Sam said.

"More than a little." I added.

Dean and I stood up, and I dropped the stick. We locked eyes and then nod at each other, both thinking the same thing.

"I'll tell you what, that's no Skinwalker or black dog."

"Exactly." I agreed.

Dean went back to the campsite and Sam followed, me hot on his heels. Haley picks up Tom's cell phone; it's bloody. I saw her tense up and sniffle quietly. She turned the phone over and I saw the back was open, a splattering of blood on the back. Dean crouched next to her.

"Hey, he could still be alive."

She gave him a look, biting her lower lip as she blinked back tears. I had to give her props for remaining strong. I guessed she was trying not to freak her younger sibling out. That's the same thing I would have done, had I been her. Freaking out my sibling wouldn't have helped anyone.

"Help! Help!" A voice suddenly called out from someplace deeper in the woods, and my head snapped up in the general direction it came from. My whole body locked up.

Roy, who had been inspecting a bloodstained and torn up sleeping bag, immediately led the way as we ran to the aid of the shouter, Dean rose and drew his trusty gun, taking after the man while Ben, myself, Sam and Haley moved quickly after them. Our footsteps pounded against the thicket of moss, sticks, dirt and wet leaves, and I gripped the straps of my backpack tighter.

"Help! Somebody!" The male voice called out.

We burst into the place where the voice had originally come from. I spun around in a circle, eyes flickering between the trees to a clump of nearby bushes, but we found no one.

"It seemed like it was coming from around here, didn't it?" Haley asked, looking around wildly. Maybe she thought it was Tommy, but it didn't sound like her brother's voice.

We listened carefully. It was silent once again. Eerily silent.

"Everybody back to camp." Sam advised after a couple seconds. I could tell by the look on his face that he was extremely unsettled. We followed Roy back to camp.

When we got back to the campsite, all of the packs (except for mine, which I still had with me, on my back), were missing.

"Our packs!" Haley cried, surprised at the random and unexpected loss of the aforementioned packs. What kind of monster would be smart enough to swipe the packs while distracting us? Were there _two_ monsters?

"So much for my GPS and my satellite phone." Roy grumbled, his eyes flickering towards me not a second later. "I don't suppose you have those things in that backpack of yours, kid?"

I shook my head grimly, beating myself up over it for not double checking. I must've forgotten them on the rush out the door, no thanks to my eldest brother. He swore under his breath.

"What the hell is going on?" Ben asked.

"It's smart." I answered, trying to keep my voice even so I didn't freak him out. "It wants to cut us off so we can't call for help."

"You mean _someone_ ," Roy interjected, "some nutjob out there just stole all our gear."

Sam walked over to Dean and me, his face hard. I frowned.

"I need to speak with you two." He looked between us. "In private."

"Sure." I said.

We moved a little ways away from the other members of our little band, into a small clearing out of sight and earshot from them. No point in freaking them out.

"Okay," Sam said, turning to Dean. "Let me see Dad's journal."

He pulled it out of his coat pocket, which was just big enough for the journal to fit. After glancing at the cover, he forked it over. Sam grabbed it, opened it and quickly flipped through until he found what he was looking for. He must've leafed through it when I was sleeping last night.

"All right, check that out." Sam turned it around so we could look at what he found, then pointed to a First Nations–style drawing of a figure.

"Wendigo." I said, eyes quickly scanning the page for information.

"Oh come on," Dean protested, "wendigos are in the Minnesota woods or, or northern Michigan." He reminded us. "I've never even heard of one this far west."

"Think about it, Dean, the claws, the way it can mimic a human voice."

"Awesome." I said wryly.

Dean groaned and raised his pistol up. The metal glinted slightly in the sunlight. "Well then this is useless."

I pulled my backpack off my body, unzipped the top of the pulled out a hunting knife. "So's this." I showed them the knife then plopped it back into my backpack, zipping it up. Frustration coursed through my body.

 _This is just freaking fantastic._ I thought.

Sam gave Dean back Dad's journal and heads past Dean, stopping for a moment.

"We gotta get these people to safety." With that, he marched back to the ruined campsite.

Sam quickly addressed them. "All right, listen up, it's time to go. Things have gotten..." he trailed off, thinking of how to phrase it without freaking everyone out, "more complicated." He settled on.

Good job, Sammy.

"What?" Haley asked, clearly more than a little upset at the idea that we suddenly had to abandon the search for her brother Being vague about the reasoning didn't exactly help, but I knew Sam didn't want to expose the truth to some "innocents", as Dad once referred to those who didn't know about the supernatural world. It stuck with us.

"Kid, don't worry." Roy said assuredly, eyeing him. "Whatever's out there, I think I can handle it."

I almost laughed. Almost.

"It's not me I'm worried about. If you shoot this thing, you're just gonna make it mad. We have to leave. Now."

Apparently Roy didn't like the fact that he was being told what to do by a man much younger than him. "One, you're talking nonsense. Two, you're in no position to give anybody orders."

"Dude." "Relax." Dean and I said at the same time.

Sam pushed on. "We never should have let you come out here in the first place, all right? I'm trying to protect you." He reasoned.

Roy sneered and stepped right into Sam's personal bubble. "You protect me?" He demanded, tone icy and incredulous. "I was hunting these woods when your mommy was still kissing you good night."

"Yeah?" Sam shot back. "It's a damn near perfect hunter. It's smarter than you, and it's gonna hunt you down and eat you alive unless we get your stupid, sorry ass out of here."

Roy laughed coldly. "You know you're crazy, right?"

"Yeah?" Sam fired back, his hands clenching into fists. "You ever hunt a wen—" My eyes grew wide and I quickly moved forward, pushing Sam away. Spilling secrets about what _really_ goes on in the world would not help find Tommy.

I pushed at Sam's arm, and he stumbled slightly, whirling towards me. His expression was full of icy rage.

"Roy!" Dean snapped. "Chill out."

"Stop." Haley said, her voice raised. "Stop it. Everybody just stop. Look. Tommy might still be alive. And I'm not leaving here without him."

There was a long pause. I looked at my brothers, avoiding Roy's gaze, who eyes I could feel burning into the back of my head.

"It's getting late." I said, looking up at the sky to try and determine how much light we had left. "This thing is a good hunter in the day, but an unbelievable hunter at night. We'll never beat it, not in the dark."

"We need to settle in and protect ourselves." Sam added, then began to walk towards the messed-up campsite. I could almost hear his thoughts of how he was going to do just that.

"How?" Haley questioned.

* * *

Our group had built up a campfire to keep warm and for light, and Dean begun to draw something in the dirt around the campsite. He was focused on it. Haley poked at the fire. I was laying next to Sam, who was at the edge of the campsite, my hands entwined together and resting on my torso. I was looking up at the sky, counting as many stars as I could. My mind had only wandered to the Drake sisters a couple times. I was getting a little hungry, but I wasn't hungry enough to pull something out of my pack and chow down on it. Besides, my backpack was near the fire, and I wasn't. I didn't want to move. I heard Ben sigh over the crackle of the fire.

"One more time, that's—"

"Anasazi symbols." I spoke up, not looking away from the stars. "It's for protection. The wendigo can't cross over them."

Roy laughed and looked into the trees, keeping his gun over his shoulder.

"Nobody likes a skeptic, Roy." Dean said coldly.

Roy scoffed slightly.

Dean headed over to sit next to Sam and I, absentmindedly kicking my leg so I could sit up too. I yelped slightly then sat up. "You wanna tell me what's going on in that freaky head of yours?" He asked Sam, who had been brooding for the past twenty minutes.

Sam sighed. "Dean—"

"No, you're not fine. You're like a powder keg, man, it's not like you." He threw in a joke to try and get Sam to open up about whatever was going through his head. "I'm supposed to be the belligerent one, remember? And that's sometimes Adam."

I made a face, pushing his shoulder. "Bite me." He stuck his tongue out at me and shoved my hand off his shoulder with a grunt.

"No thanks."

"Dad's not here." Sam said, smartly breaking up the squabble before it began. "Yep. He just confirmed what we've known all day. "I mean, that much we know for sure, right? He would have left us a message, a sign, right?"

"Yeah, you're probably right." He looked over at me. "Tell you the truth, I don't think Dad's ever been to Lost Creek. What do you think, Adam?"

"I'm in heavy agreement with you there, man."

"Then let's get these people back to town, meet up with Lis, Bree and Elena, and let's hit the road." Sam suggested. "Go find Dad. I mean, why are we still even here?" There were fragments of annoyance woven in his tone and expression.

"This is why, this book." Dean said, sitting down in front of our brother. He held up Dad's journal. "This is Dad's single most valuable possession— everything he knows about every evil thing is in here. And he's passed it on to us." He looked between Sam and me. "I think he wants us to pick up where he left off. You know, saving people, hunting things. The family business."

"Yeah." I said, agreeing with his words. Sam just shook his head. He clenched his jaw, deep in thought.

"That makes no sense." He dismissed after a beat of silence. "Why doesn't he just— call us? Why doesn't he— tell us what he wants, tell us where he is?" He asked. I knew he was trying desperately to make sense of our father's sudden disappearance, who didn't leave any indication of where he was going; he just left coordinates to here, Blackwater Ridge. Not to mention, the message directed to Dean, Lis and Bree about protecting Elena and I with their lives.

"He did tell us one thing, man." I said, then pointed to myself.

"The way I see it, Dad's giving us a job to do, and I intend to do it." Dean said.

"Dean, Adam... no." Sam whispered, his voice cracking. He looked into Dean's eyes. "I gotta find Dad." He inhaled deeply, struggling to keep his composure. "I gotta find Jessica's killer. It's the only thing I can think about."

"Okay, all right, Sam, we'll find them, I promise. You, Adam, me, and the girls. Together." He shifted slightly. "Listen to me. You've gotta prepare yourself. I mean, this search could take a while, and all that anger, you can't keep it burning over the long haul." He advised. "It's gonna kill you." I wished that what he said wasn't true. But anger makes you stupid. And being stupid in this line of work is almost as dangerous as getting attacked by some freak with fangs, claws, or black eyes when you're stunned or underprepared. Anger can get you killed. "You gotta have patience, man."

Sam looked down at the ground, then up at us. "How do you two do it? How do the girls do it? How does Dad do it?" He asked.

Dean looks over at Haley and Ben. I followed his gaze over to them. Haley was still poking at the fire, and Ben was drawing something in the dirt with a stick.

"Well for one, them." He said.

Sam looked over at Haley and Ben.

"I mean, I figure our family's so screwed to hell, maybe we can help some others. Makes things a little bit more bearable."

We lapsed into silence for a moment. I digested my brother's words.

"I'll tell you what else helps."

Sam and I looked over at Dean, waiting expectedly for his answer.

"Killing as many evil sons of bitches as I possibly can."

Sam and I looked at each other, and I felt relieved when Sam smiled, which was something he hadn't done a lot of these days. As I opened my mouth to respond, a twig snapped, and I cut myself off, tensing.

"Help me! Please!" A voiced yelled, and I blinked. I could almost feel its voice rattling my bones. Yeesh. Creepy.

Dean stands and readies his gun, and I rolled my eyes, knowing that it wouldn't do anything except piss it off if it was shot.

"Help!" It called, and Sam shined his flashlight around, looking into the tree line for any sign of the cannibalistic bastard.

"It's trying to draw us out. Just stay cool, stay put." I said calmly.

"Inside the magic circle, kid?" Roy asked mockingly.

I whirled around to face him, fed up with his shit. "Yes, inside the magic motherfucking circle, you ignorant fool." Haley, Roy and Ben looked surprised at my choice of words.

The wendigo kept pleading for help, but when none of us moved towards it, a loud, sharp, vicious growl replaced the pleading. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, a shiver ripping through my body. It made Roy point his gun at the sound.

"Okay, that's no grizzly." He breathed.

"It's okay." I heard Haley say to her brother, attempting to be comforting. "You'll be all right, I promise."

Something rushed past. Haley shrieked, and I shot up from my spot to join the two terrified siblings.

"It's here." Sam said grimly.

"Fucking awesome." I grunted, shining my own flashlight around the general vicinity, trying to catch sight of the damn thing so we knew where it was. We'd be okay as long as we stayed inside of the Anasazi symbols and no one broke them. Not that I expected anyone to.

I jumped a bit when Roy shot at it twice. Goddamn it.

"I hit it!" He said, then rushed away to see what he hit. I felt my blood turn to ice, slight panic flooding my system. Crap.

"Roy, no! Roy!" My eldest brother shouted. Suddenly, he whirled around towards the Collins' and I, pointing at us.

"Don't move." He commanded gruffly.

There was no time to protest with a man's life at stake; I did what he told me to do and didn't make a peep about it. Haley held up a stick and put it into the fire and waited a moment until it began to burn burning at one end. She pulled it out of the fire and brandished it like a weapon. Quick thinker. Good.

Dean and Sam ran after Roy, disappearing into the thicket. I immediately became more worried about my brothers' wellbeings, hoping that they would be okay.

 _A rosary wouldn't protect them from a wendigo._ I thought wryly.

"It's over here! It's in the tree!" I heard the older man shout.

"Roy!" I could faintly hear Dean call. Then, a few moments later, I heard what sounded like a neck snapping from presumably high up in some tree, and Dean said a sharp "Son of a bitch!" as he heard it at the same time everyone did.

Dread filtered through my body. I deflated like a balloon. I knew what that meant.

The wendigo killed him.

* * *

 **Sam's POV**

* * *

I was sitting up against a hollow tree stump, holding Dad's journal and absentmindedly playing with a lanyard attached it. Dean, Haley and Ben were among the tents. After heatedly debating with me and Adam on whether or not to reveal the very real existence of supernatural creatures to the ignorant siblings, Dean and Adam for it so they know what's going on, I against it because I wanted them to be normal, they had won out. They were trying to process it. Haley stared at the fire, her face a mask of shock and disbelief.

"I don't... I mean, these types of things, they aren't supposed to be real."

"I wish I could tell you different." Dean said grimly.

"How do we know it's not out there watching us?"

"We don't." I answered truthfully. "But we're safe for now."

She looked over at me, then Adam, then Dean. "How do you know about this stuff?"

Dean's eyes flickered over to us, and he was clearly thinking of what to say next. He considered his options carefully. "Kind of runs in the family." He said.

"What about those friends you mentioned earlier?" Haley asked.

"They're like us. They know what we know. But they're in a different part of the state, hunting something else. Something that isn't this."

"Is it a spirit?" She guessed.

"They didn't say. They're way too wrapped up in hunting right now to answer, which happens a lot. They're fine, I guarantee it. They know how to handle themselves." Adam responded.

It seemed the separation anxiety wasn't that much of an issue anymore for him, now that Dean and I talked with him about it. Or maybe it was because the anxiety wasn't the most crucial thing he had to worry about; this hunt was. Saving Tommy and whoever else we could potentially stumble across was.

"Oh."

I joined everyone else. "Hey." I said.

Haley stood up.

"So we've got half a chance in the daylight." I said, glancing around. "And I for one want to kill this evil son of a bitch."

Dean nodded. "Well, hell, you know I'm in."

"Same here, man." Adam was in complete agreement.

Sam shows the wendigo page of John's journal to Haley and Ben.

"'Wendigo' is a Cree Indian word. It means 'evil that devours'." I explained to them.

"They're hundreds of years old." Adam added. "Each one was once a man. Sometimes an Indian, or other times a frontiersman or a miner or hunter."

"How's a man turn into one of those things?" Haley asked. I noticed Ben was quiet. I suspected that Ben seemed to be like Elena in that respect, where they were both quiet. Observing and listening, but never really.

Dean picked a few supplies up off the ground, brushing dirt off of a can of bug spray. "Well, it's always the same." He began. :During some harsh winter a guy finds himself starving, cut off from supplies or help. Becomes a cannibal to survive, eating other members of his tribe or camp."

"Like the Donner Party." Ben realized. Adam nodded.

"Exactly like them. Cultures all over the world believe that eating human flesh gives a person certain abilities." He held up three fingers and put a finger down as he listed: "Speed, strength, immortality."

"If you eat enough of it, over years, you become this less than human thing." I said. "You're always hungry."

"So if that's true, how can Tommy still be alive?" Haley questioned, and Ben made a noise to signify he was thinking the same thing.

"You're not gonna like it." Dean said, glancing at Adam and I, then back to Haley. She looked perturbed, but insistent on finding out how her brother could still be breathing.

"Tell me." She insisted.

"More than anything, a wendigo knows how to last long winters without food. It hibernates for years at a time, but when it's awake it keeps its victims alive." Dean said. "It, uh, it stores them, so it can feed whenever it wants. If your brother's alive, it's keeping him somewhere dark, hidden, and safe. We gotta track it back there."

"And then how do we stop it?"

Dean grimaced. "Well, guns are useless, so are knives. Basically—" He up a can of lighter fluid, a beer bottle, and the white cloth he'd picked up. "We gotta torch the sucker."

"Really?" She questioned.

"Yep." Adam said. "Deep Kentucky fry the bastard. Oh, or like deep frying chicken. That wants to kill you. But it's still chicken."

Ben looked up at him. "God, that's wicked freaking cool."

Adam chuckled. Then, his voice lowered, and he mumbled to himself: "Probably wouldn't even sustain me. Great, now I really want McDonald's chicken nuggets."

"You hungry, man?" Dean asked in reference to his copious amounts of "chicken" comments.

"Starving." Adam responded sweetly.

* * *

Dean lead the way through the woods, Molotov cocktail in hand. Haley followed, then Ben, then me, then Sam.

"Dean, Adam." I called to my brothers.

They turned towards me and jogged towards me.

"What is it?" Dean asked.

I motioned to the trees. There were bloody claw marks and broken branches everywhere. We looked at the trees, which had claw marks scratched deeply into the trees and splattered with blood.

"You know, I was thinking..."

"That's never good." Adam joked, Dean chuckled, holding his hand out for a fist-bump. I rolled my eyes so much that I swore I almost , "those claw prints, so clear and distinct. They were almost too easy to follow." That unsettled me a bit.

Suddenly, an inhuman growl pierced the air, causing the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up. Adam, Dean and I whipped around, looking for the wendigo. Trees and underbrush rustled.

Haley was standing under a tree. Blood dripped on her shirt. She noticed and looked up; her eyes widening. She gasped loudly, paralyzed by fear. Adam reacted quickly. He pushed past me and grabbed her arm, yanking her out of way; Roy's corpse lands where she had been standing just seconds before.

Dean and I examined Roy as Adam inspected her, looking for any sign of harm. I quickly looked up at them, taking note of her face. Besides the stress that was painted across her face and the blood on her shoulder, she wasn't hurt.

"You okay?" He asked, then looked at us, and we looked at each other, wearing identical grimaces. "How're we looking, guys?"

"His neck's broke." Dean announced.

Adam helped Haley up. Another growl sounded, this one a lot closer than the last. Oh no.

Dean whirled around towards us, and I stood up at nearly the same time. "Okay, run, run, run, run, go, go, go!" He shouted, urgency in his voice, and we took off in the opposite direction, away from the wendigo's growls.

I heard Ben fall onto the ground, scrambling to get up. I spun around and quickly helped him up, but our group got divided; three and two, Adam with Ben and I, Haley with Dean.

"Come on, I gotcha, I gotcha." I said, then began to run up to Adam, who didn't hear that the other had fallen. I didn't want to lose my kid brother, either.

Suddenly, I heard Haley scream.

"Haley?" Ben called, panic in his voice. Without stopping to think about it, I pivoted my body and ran towards the screams, twigs and leaves crunching underfoot as I broke through brush and vaulted over fallen trees to get to the source of the distressed young woman's screams, Adam and Ben hot on my heels.

I stopped running and spotted Dean's Molotov cocktail in the dirt. I sighed heavily. The bottle was broken. Dean and Haley were nowhere to be found. Adam's familiar footsteps stopped behind me. He swore quietly underneath his breath when he saw the thing I was looking down at.

"This hunt is going spectacularly."

For a half second, I wondered what Dad would do if he was here. I pushed the thought of my head quickly, though. Dad wasn't here to show us what to do, to give us tips on how to beat the damn thing, on how to track my brother and the young woman. We didn't even know where to start looking for them.

Crap.

"Dean!" I yelled, and Adam called out for Haley, and so did Ben after a moment, who looked like he had been paralyzed at the idea of losing both of his siblings and someone who was just trying to help out his family – not that I blamed them. We looked at each other grimly where was no response from neither Dean nor Haley.

* * *

"If it keeps its victims alive, why would it kill Roy?" Ben asked. We were back at the protected campsite; we didn't want to get taken by the thing. Then who would go rescue Haley, Dean and Tommy? Nobody?

"Honestly?" I began. "I think because Roy shot at it, pissed it off."

In the dirt, something colorful caught my eye at the same time Ben did. It was a trail of peanut M&Ms. Adam bent down and picked one up.

"They went this way." He announced.

I caught up to both of them, and my brother handed over the M&M. I laughed. "It's better than breadcrumbs." I said, then tossed the M&M back into the forest.

We quickly followed impromptu trail. We come to a mine entrance marked with a slightly rusted sign that said WARNING! DANGER! DO NOT ENTER EXTREMELY TOXIC MATERIAL. Above the entrance was a larger sign that read KEEP OUT NO ADMITTANCE. Adam looked at Ben, then me. He shrugged and disappeared inside. Ben kept his eyes on me in a silent question; _"are we going in there?"_ and I nodded.

"Let's go." I said, going inside. Adam was up ahead, shining his flashlight ahead of us. I quickly took the lead, not wanting my fifteen-year-old brother to become the first choice of snack for a cannibal monster. Adam fell back behind Ben, bringing up the rear. The mine was dark, smelly, and uncomfortably claustrophobic.

I shined the flashlight around, taking careful note to watch my footing, as tripping would _not_ be good in here. Because we're in the wendigo's territory. It probably knows these mines better than anyone living – human, I mean. A loud growling sliced through the air like a hot knife would go through room temperature butter; Adam and I shut off our flashlights and I quickly pulled Ben against the wall while Adam stood next Ben, keeping his breathing as quiet and as even as he could. The Wendigo's footsteps moved towards us. I noticed that Ben was about to scream from how horrible the silhouette looked in the crappy backlighting, so I quickly covered his mouth before he could. The Wendigo moved down a different tunnel at the crossing. I glanced at Adam and Ben, who were both oddly calm and wide-eyed, respectively. I motioned for them to follow me and stick close. The wooden, rotted floorboards from years of abandonment creaked violently and not a split second later, Adam, Ben and I fell through the floor with surprised noises; we land in a pile of bones. I quickly shined the flashlight around, grimacing when another pile nearby of skulls popped up in the dark. I grimaced at the horrid smell. Poor bastard. Ben spotted them and leapt backward.

"Hey, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay." I said quickly, and Adam placed his hand on the trembling boy's shoulder, quickly calming down his breathing. I raised my eyebrow at that, then realized he must've stopped Elena from having panic attacks like this plenty of times before during scary moments in hunts, like he used to before I left.

Adam, Ben and I looked up only to see that Dean and Haley were hanging by their wrists from the ceiling. We leapt up from the skulls, and I noticed and then instantly ignored the sharp pain that flared up in my lower back and left shoulder, probably the result from the extremely sudden and uncomfortable fall into a bed of human bones. Adam and I ran up to Dean, Ben to Haley.

"Dean!" Adam and I chorused.

"Haley, wake up!" Ben begged.

I grabbed Dean and shook him awake, my eyes widening at his state. He wasn't waking up. "Dean!" I said, panic and urgency leaking into my tone.

Slowly Dean opened his eyes. Adam sagged with relief, exhaling sharply.

"Hey, you okay?"

Dean winced. "Yeah."

"Haley, Haley, wake up, wake up!"

Adam quickly grabbed the knife from his backpack and cut Dean down and Ben takes care of Haley. We helped them over to an empty patch of floor, clean of skulls and bones that have been festering down in the dark for who knows how long, and we got them to sit down. Dean made a couple pained noises, his face twisted up in an expression I saw often after one of my brothers or the girls after getting trashed by a monster with supernatural strength. Which… was all of them.

"You sure you're all right?" I asked, worriedly looking over my brother for any more injuries.

Dean grimaced. "Yeah. Yep. Where is he?" He asked, referring to the wendigo.

"He's gone for now." Adam said.

Haley divested herself of rope and it dropped onto the mine's ground, forgotten. She stood up, brushing her palms on her shorts, and we spotted Tom still hanging. Immediately, Haley began to cry, overwhelmed at the sight of her brother, beaten and dirty to hell, but still breathing.

"Tommy..." She touched his cheek gently. Tom's head jerks up instantly, his eyes wide. Haley jumps back and shrieked. She turned to Sam. "Cut him down!"

I did as she asked, and I heard Ben sniffle as he walked up to his siblings.

"We're gonna get you home." She said.

Dean and I noticed the stolen supplies were piled in the corner at the same time. Dean picked up three flare guns.

"Check it out." He announced, getting our attention. "Flare guns. Those'll work."

Adam and I grinned at the find. Dean laughed, handed Adam a gun, then and twirled the two remaining guns.

"In the words of Alyssa Drake: that's badass." I spoke up, causing Adam and Dean to chuckle.

"God, I can almost see Bree rolling her eyes at her twin." The latter commented.

"Elena's in the background face-palming and shaking her head." Adam said, which caused me to grin. I could see it happening so vividly in my head.

We headed down a long, narrow tunnel, Dean and I in the lead with the flare guns and Haley and Ben supporting Tom, who was limping, Adam protecting the siblings from behind. A sharp growl pierced the air once more.

"Looks like someone's home for supper." Dean said.

"We'll never outrun it." Not with Tom's busted leg and the wendigo's unnatural speed, combined with the fact that the bastard's made its home in these tunnels while we don't. At all.

Dean looked back at the others, then to me. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Yeah, I think so." I said. Adam hummed in agreement, and I was glad he was on the same wavelength as Dean and I were.

"All right listen to me. Ben, Haley, Tommy, stay with Sam and Adam. My brothers are gonna get you out of here."

"What are you gonna do?" Haley asked, eyes wide with confusion and slight panic. He's about to do something brave but reckless.

I think that could pretty much sum Dean Winchester up. My brother, the idiotic reckless hero.

Dean didn't respond verbally. Instead, he winked at her and began walking forward. He began to yell. "Chow time, you freaky bastard! Yeah, that's right, bring it on, baby, I taste good." His voice echoed along the walls of the mine as he continued, and I watched him until I could see him anymore, until his words were indistinct and until he was a safe distance away.

"All right come on! Hurry!" I urged, moving down the tunnel, and the Collinses followed me down the tunnel, Adam hot on their heels, keeping an eye out for the bastard.

"Hey, you want some white meat, bitch! I'm right here!" I could faintly hear Dean's voice echo off the walls. I heard Adam snort quietly from behind us. I didn't know how the heck he could find the situation funny in any capacity, but I ignored it in favor of leading everybody to safety. That question could wait for now.

The five of us hurried down a long expanse of identical looking mine tunnel. A growl rattled in my ears. I pointed the gun in the direction it came from, then lowered the gun, and turned to the Collinses and my little brother.

"Adam, get them outta here."

His eyes went wide. "Sam, no. I'm not leaving you here. Who the hell's going to watch your back?"

There wasn't any time to argue with him about my wellbeing. All that mattered was keeping them, _all of them_ , safe. Even though it wasn't directed towards me, Dad's message ran through my head as I urged: "Go! Go! Go!"

 _Protect Adam and Ellie with your life_.

And I would. No matter what.

"Come on, guys!" Ben said, and I watched my brother and co move along the mine tunnel, Adam looking for any signs of danger nearby.

I held the flare gun up, ready to shoot at whatever moved, looking down the tunnel. Adrenaline flooded through my body. "Come on. Come on." I murmured, eyes sharp, holding my breath.

A growl sounded from directly behind me, and I immediately turned to see the wendigo right behind me, right in my face. I took the shot, missed, then ran after the Collinses.

"Sam!" Adam cried when I caught up.

"Come on, hurry, hurry, hurry." I ushered, trying to ignore the throbbing in my shoulder in favor of keeping myself upright.

We ran as quickly as we could to the end of the tunnel, the Wendigo right behind us. Crap.

"Get behind me." I commanded, and my height allowed me to hide the Collinses and Adam, who immediately stepped up aiming his flare gun at the ugly thing.

The wendigo approached, taking its time. It was like a lion stalking a group of underprepared mice.

Suddenly, there were footsteps. I realized that Dean had come up behind the Wendigo.

"Hey!" He shouted.

The Wendigo turned towards him. Dean shot it in the stomach while Adam shot his own flare gun into its head at the same time. Both of the flares go off, and the wendigo let out an inhuman, agonized shriek that makes my gut twist uncomfortably as its whole body up in brilliant, white hot flames from those two large entry points on its body. I shielded my face to protect myself from the heat of the fire as it burned.

"Not bad, huh?" Dean asked cheerfully once it was completely dead.

I looked at Adam and grinned. He sighed in relief.

"God, Winchesters." He mused aloud. "We're freaking reckless. Stupid."

He flashed our brother one of his charming smiles. "You're half a Winchester."

"Yeah. Half." He reminded Dean. "So that fifty percent of me that's stupid and reckless? Guess what: that's a hundred percent you."

Dean's laughter echoed around the cave, and Tommy, Haley and Ben's laughter quickly joined in. It mainly stemmed from trauma. After it died, Dean nudged Adam's shoulder.

"We've got a hell of a story to tell the girls when we meet up with them."

"Damn straight."

I couldn't agree more.

* * *

We came up with a plausible story on the hike back which would undoubtedly end in the cops traipsing through the woods looking for a bear that didn't really exist in the first place. It wouldn't matter because the three of us would be out of town by them; a cop was interviewing Ben, and he fed them the lines Dean and I instructed him to say; the plausible story about being attacked by a bear. The brother was shirtless and bandaged, pale laying limply on a gurney in the back of an ambulance, but alive. He was almost ready to go. He had weakly thanked us for saving his life. Haley and Dean had been patched up, and I walked over to them.

"I hope you, your brothers and your friends find your father." Haley said, then kissed Dean's cheek. He smiled gently, watching her and Ben head for the ambulance.

Speaking of the girls, they had finally, _finally_ called us a couple moments ago, and we agreed to meet up with each other at the halfway point between the two towns we were in. So, that's where we were heading now, as soon as the siblings left.

"Thanks, Sam. Thanks, Adam." She said. I nodded at her respectfully.

"You're welcome." Adam said after gently squeezing her shoulder, then moved over to sit next to Dean. I stood next to them, my hands in my pockets.

We watched the ambulance, and the siblings, drive away from us, and out of our lives forever. I was just glad we saved Tommy. Eventually, the cop cars peeled away from the lot, the spectators dissipating, going back to their normal lives.

"Man, I hate camping." Dean deadpanned, cutting through the comfortable silence. I was content with the knowledge that we saved an innocent person from being dinner for some freak monster. I glad we could agree on something.

"Me too." I said.

"Sam, Adam, you know we're gonna find Dad, right?"

"Yep." Adam hummed.

"Yeah, I know." I said. "But in the meantime?" I faced my brother, lips tugging up into a smirk. "I'm driving."

Adam scoffed slightly. "I still don't think that's fair." He said in a singsong voice. I chuckled.

Without so much as a peep, Dean pulled the keys out of his pocket and tossed me the keys. I caught them, nudging Adam, who flipped me off.

We piled into the car. I started it up, and the three of us left Blackwater Ridge behind with little thought, the sign welcoming us into the town on the opposite side, whizzing past us in the rearview mirrors.

The Impala roared on into the night, tearing down the road, and when the town was miles away, I suddenly found myself thinking about the little black box which held what was supposed to be Jessica's engagement ring. Despite everything, it was still safely tucked away in the back pocket of my jeans.

* * *

 **A/N: The title, once again, is from Henry David** **Thoreau's _Walden_. T** **hank you for reading! I will be back with chapter six, "and Not, When I Came to Die" (part one of an original chapter!) sometime in the future. Hopefully it's sooner rather than later.**

 **Anyway, how was this chapter? Good? Bad? Somewhere in between? Please let me know.**

 **I will (hopefully) see you soon with another update of TRLA, friends.**

 ***Bows and exits***

* * *

 **Word count of this chapter:** **13,459. Last updated: N/A.**

 **Word count of the** **entirety** **of the Wendigo (1x02) episode, split into two parts:** **25,907. Last updated: N/A.**


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